Published on Jan 12, 2002
I’ve been listening to hardcore for several years and no matter
how many times I get a hardcore CD, I have to admit it’s a struggle
to listen to it. Most of the genre talks about being hostile
towards authority or being straight-edge or details the bowels of a
deep betrayal, none of these subjects I, personally, either have
experienced or felt a deep compassion for. I am middle-class
America, had good parents, a good upbringing, no deep betrayals
(ex-girlfriends excluded), and I like to drink beer. Further, I
considered hardcore as nothing more than a cousin of metal but
cross-bred with punk. Blasting drumbeats, metal-ish guitars and
shouted vocals being the main traits my ears would pick up as band
after band arrived into my mailbox. I kept thinking, is this all
the hardcore genre has?
And then No Warning’s self-titled release arrived in my mailbox.
Like Bigwig’s
Unmerry Melodies (the release I credit with re-introducing
me to punk), No Warning have re-introduced me to what hardcore can
be.
And it comes on a release that is not even 17 minutes long.
And it comes on a release on an independent label.
And it is not Earth Crisis. <grin>
No Warning is Ben, Matt, Jordan, Christian, and Jon, and they
list their contack address as Toronto, Ontario, Canada. No info
about who plays what in the CD booklet, and if you head out to
their
website, you’ll see that
Christian and Jon are not listed.
But back to the CD at hand, it’s really six songs and three
songs that were available on a demo. Of the nine songs present, my
absolute favorite, killer, song-with-the-greatest-redeeming-value
is “My World.” If I was waiting for a hardcore band to hit me in
the heart, No Warning stabbed me, man, with the words, “You wanna
know how I know this hate is for real/ Because it’s all I feel.”
Wow. The earlier lyrics in the song include the equally powerful
lines, “This is my world so get the fuck out and try this shit with
someone else/ You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
Musically, at only a run time of 2:14, there’s not a lot of time
to make an impression. A mere 40 seconds into the song, the band
changes the mood of the song and launches into a raunchy guitar
riff that shamelessly chugs along like a good Pantera or Crowbar or
Pro-Pain riff. But damn if it didn’t make a hardcore fan outta
me.
I think that there is a band somewhere in a given genre that
changes the tide for you. You listen to bands all trying to be the
best at what the genre offers and they all mesh into a pot of
stew.
For me, No Warning was the salt I’d been needing for several
years.