Review Summary: Jesucristo! Oki am a fan of everything hardcore from Blood for blood to converge and blacklisted, to Judge and The acacia strain. But Recon's debut for the lame O Rise records "welcome to viper city" should've been called " welcome to every song that soun
Seeing as though i am a hardcore fan there should be no bias when writing this. I will try to be as objective a possible. Excuse the grammar this is my first and prolly few if not only review.
This is my first review
Just get used to all my reviews being short and sweet. Yes they are more than sound offs.
Ok so the buzz around this band has been enormous over the past year or so and I hadn't heard of them until 10 months ago when a friends handed me their CD g"Graves". I listen to it and all i heard was the generic hardcore mantra the chants and breakdowns and such, and was quite pleased with what I heard. And about a month after that I heard they got signed to Rise records and all i could say was WOW. Rise? Isn't The Devil wears Prada and Catherine on that label. Horrible And eventually sure enough my friend Nick calls me up and is like "Dude......I just heard music that made me want to throw babies in a woodchipper" Yes we like baby jokes. And i just had to hear what music made my friend so giddy. Now my friend Nick is a pretty trustworthy person and so i went to FYE on his word and picked up the debut release from a band that was supposed to "incite murder in my heart" and that release was "welcome to viper city" I was surprised that the artwork was pretty decent for a hardcore band no pics of ppl pileing up for gang vocals or any of that crap and i went to my car and immediately unwrapped it from it's plastic wrapping and put it in my CD player. least to say i was very disappointed. I sat in my car for a few hours to give this horrid CD a chance but sorry kids "welcome to viper city" is depressing.
.....And now for devastation.
Recon is you average run of the mill beat the f*** out of you sxe hardcore. which there is no problem with that. And their debut starts off with the song welcome to viper city which is an intro track but doesn't waste anytime going into the second track off the album, armaggedon. the track is pretty fast paced and shows that this band is drug free and angry with lyrics like "Wait, take a look at yourself. Tell me if you still think you're so great. I will show you, you will f***ing fail. " Recon is showing you they don't care if you don't agree with their logic. Also with armaggedon they don't waste any time to use the 100-000-100 chord progression that was brought to light by the acacia strain. See "Carbomb" on 3750. I must say as a hardcore fan this i so overused it has no impact anymore. Except when the acacia strain does it. the next few songs abomination, berzerker and deceiver are pretty weak tracks with berzerker's slayer-esque intro into some two stepping to slow chug brutality. the song deceiver shows that the singer is dealing with some inner turmoil with lyrics like, "....This is what I've become. I am a monster, I feel nothing." The lyrics on this CD overall are pretty decent for a hardcore band. Most of the lyrics are about inner turmoil and the mysterious going ons in "viper city" a term that is loosely used by the band. It has no real meaning except the one you give it. All the rest of the song until the end are pretty sub par. this CD comes out to a great start, but there is only so much you can do when you only use the first four frets. I will say that silencer has some bury your dead-isms in it but the rest of the tracks don't hold up and there really isn't any new ideas left by the time the CD gets to coma pilot and eraser.
The production on the album is fairly clean with crisp guitar and almost trigger sounding drums. But the saddest thing on this album is the bassist gets no play. Why? he's part of the band too but not bass. Not one not is heard. I feel sad for bassist in metal and hardcore bands cause they get mixed right out of the equation. overall the production is top notch and is above par with most of the hardcore releases in the past few years it seems that rise really wants this band to stick out. but too bad this band is a rip off band.
Pros:
there really aren't any this is a diappointing release from another overhyped band. Live sound doesn't coun't. my motto is "you are what you put on CD" that's how i judge bands
Cons:
No bass
No varition, too much 100-000-100 chrord stuff
Sounds like they ran out of ideas.
In conclusion i would recommend picking up 3750 instead of this. I have seen Recon live with their new material and they Own as do all bands live. But they acacia strain shows variation especially with their new release "continent" on prosthetic records.
Be smart buy CDs you are going to want to listen to in 20 years don't just live for the moment.
