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Rating:
This album is considered the most intense of all releases from Discord Records (the record label founded by Ian MacKaye), and I can truly say that no song on this album lacks intensity.
Musically, it highlights the DC hardcore style of the '90s, with drums and bass leading the song, dense guitar riffs, and a distressing voice that enriches everything, even though these songs would be distressing without this type of vocals. It carries a notable degree of maturity regarding the emotionality of the various songs, a maturity also due to the fact that this album comes out when many bands had already experimented a lot with this genre. This is emo reaching its peak of maturity.
No track on this album is boring, even if overall it is rather slow. Songs like "Distant" and "Pretender", which, incidentally, introduce the whole thing, give the right charge to endure the rest of the tracks. In "Cable" you hear the sound of a trumpet in the background, which towards the end of the song is interrupted to make way for a passage tending towards jazz. "Letter" is, in a nutshell, six minutes of incessant anguish.
You reach the end of this dark journey with "Cuts Like Drugs", a good seven minutes of a crescendo that scratches your brain and immobilizes you as you listen to those final screams that seem to sink into nothingness. For me, one of the most beautiful emo songs of this period.
What can I say, this is an album that overwhelms you, and with each guitar riff, it penetrates you more and more, leaving almost indelible marks. An absolute must-listen.
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