Artist: Soldiers
Label: Trustkill Records
Release: 2007
Another warm welcome to the realm of half-step riffing and boundless psychotic rampaging, with a creation of unbearably noisy proportions! This time it’s hosted by the youngsters from Long Island (New York, USA) Soldiers. Noise, half-steps, melody-free screaming that runs over the riffs, layer of brutality piled on layer of brutality. Bar after bar, bite after bite. All over the place for a slim 35 minutes, which is all the debut “End Of Days” has to offer. Thirteen tracks, each running between two and three minutes. The raw production of the tense, forward-driving rattle of the bass, which in the overall sound picture holds up the massive riff-puking and keeps it standing, literally like Atlas with the Earth on his shoulders! So we’re talking about a new hardcore band. No more, no less.
The whole thing is produced to a high standard across the board. The songs are wrecking balls, compact in shape, played with conviction whenever Soldiers feel like knocking the listener upside the head. These guys are truly extreme in their chaotic rampage, like few others. In the company of bands like Subterfuge, This is Hell, Last Conviction, Scarps and Heart Attacks, Soldiers fit right in too. On the hardcore horizon they don’t bring anything new at all, mind you. In the riffs you hear their origins in thrash metal again, even gang shouts (Since Day One, Decide And Conquer), with which the guys dose out the destructive mood with an extra element of devastation, while the rhythm line, mostly thanks to the raw production and the free-running flow of that elementary rock’n’roll primal core, adds a touch of punk to the Soldiers picture (it stands out especially on a track like Own Up!).
Since there are again no guitar solos to be found anywhere, the vocals get even more of a starring role in how they express themselves. The technically polished rhythm line drives the bulk of the Soldiers story, constantly spinning dizzyingly fast around its axis, and there’s no fear of the guys losing their core focus whenever it’s time to collectively pump out core power in one direction. This is a brilliantly tight gang of young nihilists. Singer Rick Jimenez sandpapers his way out of his throat, or in other words uses a sharp, rough, cracked, mid-pitched voice, which he of course exploits to the fullest for tearing, brutal screaming. The riffs really don’t need Einstein-level flashes of genius, everything in them is stripped down and predictable, but taken to the noisy extremes that the studio can still allow and that honest hardcore, at its very essence, actually wants and demands.
Out of all the merciless rubbing of salt into bleeding wounds, the track The Reclamation stands out on the record. It’s built on a mid-tempo pace with down-tuned guitars, where Jimenez’s screaming is especially intense, as is the embrace of the crash cymbals, while the bass lines and riffs, with their deep groove, give the song a pronouncedly doomy climax. Everything else on “End Of Days” is ripped through with the gearstick in a higher gear! The guys allowed themselves just one foolish move. Tacked onto the end of the album as a bonus is the track Living Hell, which is a perfect “rap crap”. Apparently the singer Jimenez’s ego needed some validating and gave him no peace, and the guy, who otherwise doesn’t hide his great knowledge of highly flexible tongue-twisting, managed to force a track on the album that shows off his rapping skills, one that simply spoils the good taste left by the dose of relentless core pummeling and so makes the whole album less serious.
Still, End Of Days (minus that bonus track) is a superbly dressed hardcore album from head to toe, we might even call it a hardcore/punk album, and in its destructive sonic wrath fans of the Long Island hardcore scene will find themselves right at home, a scene that could also take in another band of their fellow New Yorkers, Sick Of It All. This is a group from which we can undoubtedly expect another similarly profiled, highly destructive studio projectile in the future. Worth a try for true fans of the genre!
Line-up
Rick Jimenez – vocals
Briab Audley – guitar
Chris Mazella – guitar
Andrew Jones – bass
Dan Bourke – drums
Production
Joe Cincotta, Dan Kenny & T$S
Tracklist
01. Even Worse
02. Sever Ties
03. The Reclamation
04. Decide And Conquer
05. Choosing Revenge
06. Relentless
07. Bound By Defiance (T$S)
08. Damage Is Done
09. Nothing More, Nothing Less
10. Own Up!
11. Since Day One
12. Smoke And Mirrors
13. Living Hell*
*.. bonus track
Album length:34.47
