Review Summary: Converge's equally as talented distant Belgian cousin.
Hailing from New Jersey I find myself often traveling to our personal Mecca of record stores known as Vintage Vinyl at least twice a month. Every Wednesday they have a buy two get one free sale on used CD's and although I'm well aware of them being heralded as the ulgy-stepsister to their vinyl counterparts - it's what I collect. It's much more forgiving on the wallet and I can listen to them in car. Typically when browsing through their massive selection of used goods I'll pick up albums and bands I've never heard of on what I call a blind buy - which is essentially going off your gut and the album art in the hopes that you found a diamond in the rough. Usually I mostly find cubic zirconium - records that are almost great, but not quite the genuine article; just almost passable imitations of a greater original. However, this is that very diamond I've been panning through the muck hoping and waiting for.
"Rage Scream Live" kicks like a mule right from the opening track and rarely relents for nearly 40 intense minutes. It's obvious these guys have taken a page or two straight from the Converge/Coalesce playbook, but they really rewrite the rules and put a fresh spin on a tried and true formula. It's abrasive, it's aggressive, yet it's a really memorable record for how vicious it is. Vocally, The Reply is reminiscent of a more intelligible Jacob Bannon with a shouted albeit semi-monotonous delivery. They occasionally let up on the rough stuff and distortion momentarily to throw in some semi-clean guitar passages into the mix which surprisingly works well and doesn't feel like it's being forced in there just to be quirky. However, for the bulk of it this album is just a tornado of frenetic dissonance and mean riffing - it's chaotic hardcore the way it was always meant to be played. It's not quite as technical as some of their peers work - nor as refined, but it's certainly unique and punishing. This record sounds natrual and authentic, almost as the recorded it one take and didn't do much post-production.
As pulverizing as the record is it doesn't carry that "wall of sound" feel and it remains engaging for its entirety, constantly throwing the listener a curve-ball and making them pay complete attention. The only time the energy lets up even slightly is on the title track and closer, but they make up for it with a really dark, plodding, sludgy atmosphere that is just plain heavy (think Ahab meets mid section "The Saddest Day" from Converge). "Rage Scream Live" really has something to satisfy fans of Neurosis to Botch and everything in between.
Sadly it's almost as if this band never even existed. After almost an hour of research on the group all I can find out about The Reply is that they had 4 records, they're from Belgium and that not a single track from these guys exist on the internet aside from their Myspace page. The record label's website has gone down (and is now a pseudo-Japanese porn page - interesting twist ending) and the only download link that was up has since been removed - so what I'm trying to say is: good luck finding actual copies of this unless you live in Belgium or have some stroke of luck as I did. All I can do is hope to be fortunate enough stumble across the other 3 records someday; until then, this CD I proudly own is one of the only pieces of proof of how killer this relatively unknown band truly was. The moral of the story here is to test the waters of your local record store and eventually pull in a big mythical Converge-like fish - it's well worth losing some bait (read: money) in the process.
