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Capital and When We Fall…

Capital - Signal CorpsEvery now and then a CD gets temporarily lost in the shuffle at my place and ends up sitting around collecting dust for months before I even pop it in for a listen, and unfortunately "Signal Corps", the debut full-length from Long Island's Capital (on Iron Pier), falls into that category. I have no idea how it happened, but thankfully this gem did turn up, because this shit is fucking awesome. Following in the footsteps of a few other Long Island notables, this outing sees Capital cranking out nine tracks of super catchy and energetic melodic hardcore in about a half-hour—spicing things up with subtle hints of dissonant post-hardcore or Fat Wreck-styled pop-punk riffing along the way. On occasion I'm reminded of a more modern-sounding Dag Nasty with slightly more aggressive vocals, which is fine by me. There are lots of killer little riffs and picking patterns going on, while solid basslines beef up the sound and slick percussive accents color up the overall flow. For the most part the songwriting is fucking flawless in terms of maintaining a punchy energy level and a memorable framework, and it's been getting rarer and rarer for me to encounter such qualities as of late, so I'm totally all over this. Very much recommended, and I can't wait to hear more...

Capital "Snake in Disguise"
Capital "Early Nineties"

Show 'em some love and pick one up if you dig the tunes:

Iron Pier
RevHQ
Very Distribution






When We Fall - A Cry in DespairTalk about misleading cover art! This thing was just screaming, "Mediocre metalcore awaits!" But in fact, When We Fall (from Gothenburg, Sweden, no less) is a solid melodic hardcore act without too much of a metal influence seeping into their sound at all. This edition of their first EP, "A Cry in Despair", is a re-release on Panic Records containing five fairly short tracks of energetic hardcore chord progressions and melodic accents that follow a straightforward sort of approach that will probably sound familiar to many. They do toss in a few clean passages on rare occasion to add additional dynamics and whatnot, but even though it's not particularly original I do enjoy the songwriting quite a bit, and the vocal performance definitely comes across as sincere in my book. They've got a solid set of production values happening too, so this is a good start that bodes well for the future of the group. I don't hear too much of this stuff coming from European shores, but there's definitely an audience for this style in North America, and some of these riffs are right up my alley. Don't let the artwork fool you... though I still hope the band will work with something a little more representative of their music the next time around, heh! Good stuff.

When We Fall "No Retreat No Surrender"

This one's a mere $5 straight from the label, which is an incredibly fair price, so be sure to make the grab if you dig the track above:

Panic Records

Comments

  1. Have you heard By Night’s “The New Shape Of Desperation”? It’s been compared to Unearth which is completely mad since they sound nothing alike. They sound more like latter-day Extol, with choppy riffs and droning lead guitars over a hardcore bark.  I think you might like it. :)

    1.16.2007 | By Lal

  2. I’m JUST NOW listening to the Capital tracks you put up. This shit is really fucking good! Really like the vocals and the energetic style of hardcore is golden.

    8.7.2007 | By Thomas

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