Top Pick
Speed – Only One Mode (hardcore)
Sppppppppppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeddddddd! If you don’t know the name by now, you will once this Sydney hardcore crew are through with you. Not only because they never miss a chance to announce themselves acroos each of the ten tracks that make up debut long(ish)-player Only One Mode, but also because its probably the best old-school hardcore album you or I have heard in some time.
At just under twenty-five-minutes Only One Mode is short and too the point, and Speed waste no time letting you know what they’re all about. There’s plenty of harcore posturing on display, for sure, but the synchronized Night at the Roxbury-style head-bobbing and barely contained laughter that pervade their videos, or the cheeky flute sections and turntable scratches thrown in on ostensibly earnest tracks like instant classic “The First Test” suggest they don’t take themselves too seriously either. The fun they are having certainly comes through in the music, making for one of the most enjoyable and elating hardcore experiences any band have laid down in some time, maybe ever.
Speed are no Sick of It All (just yet), but I probably enjoy Only One Mode about as much as anything Agnostic Front have put out, and way more than most Madball albums. The first step is to say “fuck the rest!”, and here Speed provide ten seriously solid reasons for doing exactly that.
Release Roundup
Abhorrent Execration – Vengeance Unfolds (brutalish death metal)
Against Evil – Give ‘Em Hell (thrash, hair metal)
Aldheorte – Where Gods Have Eyes to See (black metal)
Amerakin Overdose – Artificial Infection (very bad not good nu metal)
Axxis – Coming Home (heavy metal, hardsh rock)
Black Capricorn – Sacrifice Darkness…and Fire (stoner doom)
Black Lava – The Savage Winds Of Wisdom (blackened death metal)
Blasfeme – Black Legion (black metal)
Blizaro – Chapter None (prog doom)
Budderside – White Flame (hair/sleaze metal)
Cassandra Jenkins – My Light, My Destroyer (ambient pop, indie rock)
Centregaze – Xeno (prog metal)
Clactonian – Dea Madre (blackened death metal)
Cleansing Of The Temple – The Devil Knows My Name (nu deathcore)
Cranial Disorder – Congenita Depravity (brutal death metal)
Crown of Anguish – Stalker at the Midian Gate (doomy death metal)
Dark Mile – Dark Mile (hard rock, hair metal)
Deface the Traitor – Reign (deathcore)
Diskord/ATVM – Bipolarities Split (weird/brutal prog-death)
Disloyal – Divine Miasmata (blackish death metal)
Eremit – Rise of the Ruan~angh (regressive prog-death, funeral trad?)
Eminem – The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) (please stop)
Endless Floods – Rites Futurs (funeral doom)
Forgotten Tomb – Nightfloating (melodic DSBM)
Ghül – Minas Morgul (post-blackened doom)
Gingivectomy – Screams of Nestleros (slamming brutal deathcore)
Gorgonchrist – And Justice For Balls (blackish death metal)
Graphic Nature – Who Are You When No One Is Watching? (nu/electro metalcore)
The Home Team – The Crucible of Life (pop rock, post hardcore)
Inferia – Ass Appeal Madness (deathgrind)
In Hearts Wake – Incarnation (surprisingly decent/stanky metalcore)
Jegulja – Anguilla Guerrilla (instrumental stoner groove)
King 810 – Under the Black Rainbow (terrible showtunes? Repo!–core?)
Kommandant – Exhibition Of Conquest (black metal, annoying snare)
Labyrinth – Unforeseen Consequences (thrash)
The Last King – Culling From Gods (prog death)
Legions Of The Night – Darkness (power thrash/doom)
Leivato – Illusory Nocturnal Captivity (meloblackened prog-death)
Lord Buffalo – Holus Bolus (dark folk, post-doom)
Lwstndrds – Songs of Atrocity (grindcore, deathgrind)
Mages Terror – Damnations Sight (heavy/death metal)
Mithrandir – Latlaús (black metal)
Mothman And The Thunderbirds – Portal Hopper (prog rock/metal)
Mr. Big – Ten (hardish/blues rock)
Munitions – Remote Death (melodeath)
Nava Calma – The Full Weight Of Everything (depressive post rock)
Nine Stones Close – Diurnal (post/prog rock)
Northbound – Juniper (pop punk, emo)
Obscene – Agony & Wounds (death metal)
Occult Witches – Sorrow’s Pyre (stoner metal/doom)
Orb – Tailem Bend (psychedelic/stoner rock)
Ortha – Возвращение (folky meloblack)
Pestilent Death – Pathways To Infinite Malignity (brutal death metal)
Phish – Evolve (psychedelic jam, prog rock)
Plutocracy Planet – Plutocracy Planet (weird/noisy/progressvie post-hardcore)
The Radicant – We Ascend (mellow/post/electro-prog)
Raziel’s Tree – Dream Slit (weird instrumental prog-sludge)
Sars – Nothing Hurts Quite Like Life (groove death, hardcore)
Scarcity – The Promise Of Rain (weird/droney post-black)
Seth – La France des Maudits (black metal, meloblack)
Sick/Tired – Whip Hand Paranoia (grindcore)
Sissy Spacek – Diaphanous (noisy deathgrind)
Spiral Grave – Ill Repute (stoner/doom metal)
Tenebrae Annex – Conditioning (noisy industrial/electro)
Testament – The Legacy Remastered (newish old thrash metal)
Testament – The New Order Remastered (newish old thrash metal)
Thirteen Goats – Capricorn Rising (groove thrash)
Tim Montana – Savage (butt metal)
Toe – Now I See the Light (chill math/post rock)
Totengott – Beyond The Veil (death doom)
Turin – The Unforgiving Reality In Nothing (groove death/core)
Vanessa Funke – Void (progressive/gothic black metal, blackgaze)
Vanhelgd – Atropos Doctrina (black metal)
Voice – Holy Or Damned (heavy metal)
Votive – Towards The Pillory (blackened grind/hardcore)
Vower – Apricity (post-hardcore, metalcore)
I’m very disappointed that they didn’t pad this out a bit and call it Half-Hour of Vower.
Vuur & Zijde – Boezem (black doom)
Wallop – Hell On Wheels (heavy metal, thrash)
Webbed Wing – Vol. III (alt rock, grunge)
Werewolves – Die For Us (edgy death metal)
Windwaker – Hyperviolence (extremely irritating pop/ectro-metalcore)
This song is good though.