Bane
Don't Wait Up

If I had attended any American high school, I could now, right here, right now, look back at the yearbook of my last year, in a slightly nostalgic and melancholic haze, remembering the good times. Old faces, old experiences, old versions of myself. Searching in the past for the best memories that are imprinted there. Listening to Bane for me is more or less an experience like that.

So you see yourself as a kid in the early years of high school coming into contact with Converge, with Jacob Bannon, Kurt Ballou, Nate Newton, Ben Koller, and, last but not least, Aaron Dalbec. Ah yes, you start listening to Petitioning The Empty Sky day and night, you fall in love with every single intertwining of violence, pain, and the suffocating explosions of a group that was slowly becoming a colossus of the American East Coast and beyond. Meticulously, you start wandering on an old 56k modem with a speed worthy of a busted '70s Chevy looking for information about the members, you read interviews, reports. You're doing your homework, in short. And you find Bane. And you listen to The Note. And then again Give Blood. And going back you discover It All Comes Down to This. From one day to the next you find yourself catapulted into hardcore, no... melodic hardcore, yet it's so different from that of Black Flag, wait they’re straight edge, yet Minor Threat had another sound. For me, used to the '80s school spent between Gang Green, Reagan Youth, Bad Brains, and early Suicidal Tendencies, it was a small revolution. But in the end, as the famous annual festival in Philly would say, with Bane nothing is simpler than a banal definition: this is hardcore.

Times pass and we arrive at 2014. After 9 years from “The Note,” Bane reveal that they will leave the scene, forever, definitively. A blow to the heart. But they want to leave one last testament: Don’t Wait Up. Like saying, tonight we go out to have fun, to play with our crew all night, to do what we do best as if there were no tomorrow, a great last concert to celebrate the great creature Bane that is going to rest eternally. And you, neighbors, acquaintances, passersby that we meet along Massachusetts Avenue, don’t wait for us, we’ll be late, go ahead and go to sleep. Don’t Wait Up, indeed. And so it was. From start to finish, over ten tracks, there is the soul of Bane. They reinvented a scene, from them came American Nightmare, Modern Life Is War, Have Heart, Killing The Dream, and the like shortly after, and the last breath cannot be something dull and feeble. Absolutely forbidden and our guys committed to making a full-length that can easily be placed among the best episodes of their discography. A concentrate of passion, adrenaline, and energy that only punk can give you. They start with “Non-Negotiable” and drag you into their vortex. Jay Mass (guitarist of Defeater) produces divinely, delivering only the sonic power that Bane unleashes, defined, yet aggressive, raw, without frills and embellishments. How a record should always sound. Unless you’re fetishists of b-sides recorded in the basements of Alphabet City squats.

You reach the final escalation of “Final Backward Glance” thinking about how that crescendo is the finale of an entire career, story, and, I’m not ashamed to say it, a tear may fall without any problem. The veins of Bane all appear. You instantly recognize that screamed out loud of Bedard, so characteristic and electrifying that knows no pauses. It hammers, taking breaks only when gang vocals emerge here and there, as if in a big party among friends. And friends appear in “Calling Hours” among them teacher Pat Flynn (Have Heart, what a coincidence!), the sweet Reba Meyers who, in Code Orange Kids, is known in her more irate and hysterical guise (here she’s closer to the attitude of her side project Adventures), Delgado of Rotting Out, Wood of Terror. A celebration, in simple terms. The other Aaron, Dalbec, on guitar along with trusty Zach Jordan, dishes out riffs as God intends. Sharp, biting that stay in your mind immediately, imprint themselves easily and forgetting them is almost impossible. Well, then there’s the trademark of Bane's house. The harmonizations, slowdowns, melodies, and arpeggios that highlight the intimate side of Our Guys. Listening to “Wrong Planet” and being enchanted by the hypnotic cadence, by story teller Bedard where he narrates personal dramas dragging the rest of the band with him. But it doesn’t end here, they venture into thrash rhythms, “What Awaits Us Now” has the flavor of certain crossover thrash outbursts à la DRI or Cryptic Slaughter. Linkovich (bass) and Mahoney (drums) are not supporting players, but set the pace, the rollercoaster of emotions is also thanks to them as they punctuate the pace with precision and tasteful style choices creating a changing sound, ready to explode at any moment or quiet down for a headbanging where all nervous tension can be released.

A journey in which Bedard imbues the sound with notable nostalgia; it can't be otherwise. With disarming sincerity and honesty, remembering a friend who committed suicide or the daily difficulties that can weigh like boulders, a vague sense of bitterness in not wanting to grow old, to remain young rampant lions of the hardcore scene, all with a positive imprint. As Converge would say, “Keep shining on.” Scars, wounds that slowly heal fighting for their identity, without forgetting who they really are. And so, there’s the flowing of years in Bane, spent on tour, in the studio, on the road, starting from Worcester, where it all began. The least I can do from my MacBook (awaiting to be there, front row, under the almost hip-hop/rap dance moves of a wild Bedard on stage) is to give them five stars and thank them for the music they created one last, great time with this “Don’t Wait Up.”
 

“This is my final backward glance, I've never been much good at saying goodbye. Goodbye.”