These bands were like weeds in the mid-'00s. Bulldozer crust with gruff vocals and Scandi-lite guitar leads that kinda sounded like '90s pop punk if you dropped them onto a STRUNG OUT record. There were often little hints of black metal too, but that was before people openly acknowledged that the Burzum dude was a fucking nazi (full disclosure: I wore a Burzum shirt for most of my first Japanese tour 1996 - it's not a thing I feel awesome about). Some of these recordings make me cringe when I hear them, and some of them strike a nerve...the right nerve, and they make me nostalgic. Check the TERROR LEVEL RED 12" for example - it was maybe a little late to the picnic in 2007 (an unavoidable timeline perhaps, as they were really young), but holy SHIT does that thing hold up today. See also Southern California anarcho-crusters PROBLEM REACTION SOLUTION....the metal tinges are more on the melodic and anthemic end (MAIDEN, HAMMERFALL), but none of that detracts from the guttural dual vocal churn that makes up most of this 2005 release. Pretty sure this was all they ever offered, and a fifteen year old $1 bin demo probably isn't going to make of a blip on most radars since, you know...it's not "cool," but I'll take the guitar break at 2:42 in "Drug Addicted Population" any fucking day. Also, "Mass Murder" shamelessly rips "Eye Of The Tiger" in the best possible way.
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