Hardcore has taken a new direction nowadays with the reinvention of metallic hardcore and the much reviled/praised metalcore genre. Bands that blend the two genres are considered by many to be unoriginal and aren’t even given a chance by most serious metal listeners. Now I will say that some bands just make music that sounds like they have no interest in playing it whatsoever and play it for aesthetic purposes only; for the simple purpose of the “I’m in a band, and you aren’t”, mentality. Altogether I think it is becoming harder to find bands that really step outside of the ring and do things that are considered new and to be moving the genre in a more progressive direction. Now, having said all of that I must tell you up front that this band does none of the latter. This may be one of the more simple bands in the world. There is nothing in this album that will absolutely blow your mind and have you pacing your apartment about how amazing what you just heard was. But this band succeeds in showing that you don’t need that in order to make a good hardcore release. Now keep in mind that this album is more hardcore than it is metal, there are SOME metal inspired riffs but this album isn’t a metalcore album.
Des Moines own ‘Too Pure To Die’ have since signed to Trustkill records and re-released this album with a few new songs and a new singer that they got right after releasing this version on Sumerian records, the older release is what this review is for.
‘Confidence and Consequence’ solidifies Too Pure to Die as quite an interesting band. One listen to their new release and you’ll understand what I mean. This is a band that chooses to write more simplified guitar structures and riffs in order not to overcomplicate things. It is so nice to hear a band not try to play as fast, hard, furious and just bring things back to basics with some groove inspired hardcore rock. The title track kicks the album off with a bang, including probably the most infectious riff on the whole album. Right off the bat you get to hear the simplified vocals that are like bat to the balls of the music. The album isn’t long whatsoever, clocking in at just over 30 minutes, so the music just keeps right on going the whole way through, no interludes with weird sounds, no drawn out introductions to songs just each song for what it is, the whole way through. On ‘Blame No One’ the band shows off its more groove oriented self, with riffs and beats that will get your head bobbin as quick as anything you’d hear on the radio. ‘Dead to Me’ is probably the heaviest track on the record combining the bands now trademark groove oriented riffage with the more hardcore style that they band was clearly influenced by. The song ‘99’ also carries through the hardcore style of playing mixed with the more groove to it (A southern groove if you will.) The highlight track on the album is the very last one, ‘Our Only Chance’; it deals with the concept of being straight edge. For anyone who isn’t familiar with the term it breaks down as such. A person with the straight edge lifestyle does not do drugs, drink, or smoke, a drug free lifestyle if you will. I am not straight edge nor do I wish to become straight edge, the part of this song that makes it the best on the album is the singers’ devotion to the cause. You can tell through his hardcore barks that he truly believes in what he is trying to convey and wants people to understand what this lifestyle is all about. His conviction carries over to his voice and makes this song a worth wile listen to just about anyone.
The instrumentation on this album is clean and precise, the guitars sound clean and crunchy, the drums sounds clean and amazing, and the vocals sound polished and clean, believe me, you won’t have any trouble understanding what this guy is saying on this album. Which is one thing that really stands out, on many hardcore and metal releases today (even to the most devoted listener), some vocals get garbled down and very hard to understand. You can honestly understand everything that is coming out of this guys’ mouth %100 of the time, which is a feat all in itself. The guitars, like I stated above, are very simplistic. They don’t have one riff on the album that is hard for anyone to play, but getting back to the more simplified groove of hardcore music was the aim, and they succeeded. The drums stand out as holding down the beat of things and nearly coming off unnoticed which is a let down of the album. I really wished they would’ve spent a little more time with the drum tracks making things a bit better. But in all honesty, they get the job done. The bass is almost non-existent (like it is with so many releases), and there’s not much to comment about it.
Overall the album pulls off its desired effect: simplistic songwriting/playing, slick production, and music to mosh to. But for people looking for a release that stands out above the rest for musicianship and more intensely emotional music, they’re not gonna find that here. This album comes off as a new band trying to make a good throwback groove oriented album (in which they did), but also made an album that almost segregates against people looking for more musicianship. I’m all for simplicity, but my opinion is that they got to where they are because they can play what they play very good, and they should’ve shown some of that on this release. But either way, they did a really good job with making the album it sounded like they wanted to make.
