Born Against
Nine Patriotic Hymns For Children

The Born Against are one of the nastiest hardcore punk bands ever. They play in an aggressive, raw, and dirty manner: sometimes, when you listen to them, it feels like the song is just a pretext to scream out their infinite political rage. The rhythm section is as close to the sound of a moving tracked vehicle as you can imagine; the guitars feel like being hit with shovels, and the socio-political denunciation lyrics are declaimed, shouted, and sometimes sung.

In 1991, their second full-length album comes out, one of their most representative works, "Nine Patriotic Hymns For Children." As mentioned above, the album is a concentration of violence (an overused expression, but fully justified here), both conceptual and sonic, without a moment’s respite, without the slightest melodic inflection; every track explodes within a couple of minutes, but the decibels are in no way limited. New Yorkers, the Born Against partly betray their origin, not straying too far from the NYHC of bands like Agnostic Front and Sick Of It All, featuring "screaming" vocals, powerful and distorted riffs, tight rhythms, and breakdowns: but unique are their intent to break norms, their guerrilla-like attitude, and deep commitment. The themes addressed include war, abuse of power, racism, religion, all viewed from a pessimistic and extremely critical perspective, particularly towards bourgeois institutions, the government, the law enforcers.

The entire album remains on the same high level: the chaotic opening of "Mount The Pavement", the slow and painful "Shroud", and "Nine Years Later" stand out. It is an excellent work by a band that certainly sowed more than they reaped, dissolving soon after, with the various members swallowed back into the underground chaos from which the project had emerged, later cited as a fundamental influence by the more famous and respected Refused; finally, one of the most intelligent moments in the recent history of this genre.