Artist: First Blood
Label: Bullet Tooth
Release: 2010
Runtime: 44:39
Rating: 5/5
Holy hell! The new album from First Blood, Silence is Betrayal, is going to flat-out run you over. Starting with the intro, which is fittingly called Intro, and rolling into Silence, they kick off their provocative art, and it keeps coming all the way through the record. The album isn’t long on the clock, but it’s got a seriously effective title – Silence is Betrayal. If you don’t want to speak up, First Blood will make sure you know you have to.
Even though the album works best when you listen to it front to back, and it’s very much a concept record, it’s also got songs that stand on their own. Enemy pulls angry crowds together into organized, intelligent hordes that won’t back down and won’t budge. Resist hands its crew a war cry: ”I refuse! No, I won’t comply!”. Enslaved wakes people up to the nature of their existence. First Blood aren’t afraid to shock the world in this age of political and social complacency. Strategic use of sayings and recorded clips of people on the front lines show up in individual songs as a kind of extra thread tying things together. If nothing else, First Blood get you to realize what you were really told, what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to live, all under the guise of heavy hardcore.
Musically, the album covers everything hardcore was and everything hardcore is today. Heavy breakdowns, universal gang shouts and fan-friendly two-steps are waiting around every corner of the record. First Blood have their roots in early hardcore punk. They also have strikingly honest thematic messages and a hard-hitting way of delivering them. The not exactly original riffs from Kyle Dixon and Manuel Peralez are still HC through and through, standing on solid ground and calling us to the action that is Silence is Betrayal. Rather than showing off and flaunting their technique, bassist Anthony Pizzarelli and drummer Eddie Vigil drop into their own groove and lock in together, shaping and delivering messages that are more than obvious.
What’s also really noticeable, and sounds great, is the breakdown/gangshout in the track Detach, which hit the peak of hardcore brutality this year. A literal plane crash is used as the way into the beatdown, and it’s the most heart-stopping moment on the album. Carl Schwartz spits out his deep, seriously pissed-off vocals and lyrics, which are the best of this year’s hardcore, if not of the whole decade. While some bands waste their time on so-called bro-core, barking clichéd phrases like “we are the strongest, we’ll kill you, we’re the coolest”, First Blood use the real voice of the people, the hardcore of those who want change.
What’s most universal about the album is that it doesn’t have the classic American message – left or right – but something more real and basic: wrong or right. Confront wants the listener to stand up and fight for what they believe in, and to call on others to follow. If you’ve ever been unhappy with the state of the world, with debauchery, lying, fear, injustice, abuse, marginalization, deception, or if you’ve been part of the machine, it’ll inspire you with the confidence to do something about it. As in traditional hardcore, the music is a handy launchpad for the key messages we need to get. Given that the album is short, it almost feels like it was done that way on purpose, to express First Blood’s sense of urgency. Ever since the voice of reason got drowned in madness, First Blood insist that time is running out. With the last track, Armageddon II, Schwartz warns of impending doom. This is not a public service announcement or an ad telling you to call your leaders. This is a call to action of the wildest kind. This is the Silence is Betrayal of the California boys who go by the name First Blood.
If you’ve been waiting a long time for a good hardcore record, Silence is Betrayal is the end of that wait. For fans of Full Blown Chaos and Surge Of Fury it’s an answered prayer, and the same goes for everyone fed up with social excess, or who are that excess themselves. As the late comrade Lenin would say: “Crime is a product of social surplus”.
Lineup
Carl Schwartz – vocals
Eddie Vigil – drums
Athony Pizzarelli – bass
Manuel Peralez – guitar
Kyle Dixon – guitar
Production
Zach Ohren
Track list
1. Intro
2. Silence
3. Preamble
4. Enemy
5. Resist
6. Truth
7. Detach
8. Enslaved
9. Confront
10. Fear
11. Occupation
12. Fascism
13. Lies
14. Messenger
15. Survive
16. Armageddon II
