COMMON FEARS

While it's impossible for me to listen to COMMON FEARS with unbiased ears, watching the crowd watch them play two weeks ago in Austin confirmed what I already knew. I admit that I was studying the band more than watching them, having spent nearly two decades in various bands with the guitarist. It was interesting picking his riffs out of the band's material and the bare honesty from the singer is a nearly absent quality from hardcore bands in the new millennium, an absence that I lament frequently. But while these are all personal observations and anecdotes, the six songs here absolutely stand on their own with no personal attachment or context. It's cerebral hardcore, filled with the desperation that helps set the bands who mean it apart from the ones who are going through the motions. Those riffs I was talking about range from infectious ("Burn Cures") to soul sucking ("Doomed" is painful in its simplicity), and even when COMMON FEARS approach the roads more frequently travelled, there's just enough weird in the presentation to keep them from merging into traffic. I want lyrics next time, something tells me the thought that goes into them might push this over the top...

COMMON FEARS