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Rating: Singing in 25 minutes the despair of failure, the anguish of abandonment, the fierce and impotent rage towards a deaf and mute sky, unyielding and impermeable to the cry of those asking for relief.
With a fury like no other, this Californian quintet throws into the fray this pure hardcore grenade composed of 12 venomous, sharp, furious shrapnel. Fantastically produced by Kurt Ballou, the album in question offers a granite hc/punk of Chain of Strength or Battery school mixed with darker and heavier formations like Ringworm, although their sound is original and unmistakable. What distinctly sets Killing the Dream apart from many other hc bands is precisely this sense of total resignation and abandonment to failure which is the very essence of life (this is somewhat the message conveyed by the lyrics) and a sort of subliminal desire for death as consolation, as an end to all mockery and deceit.
Certainly, it's not the most cheerful message, and it deviates significantly from the traditional hardcore canons, which usually encourage fighting and never giving up (and it's wearing us out, as it's become unsustainable rhetoric - see many crust militant bands -) and also from the concepts advocated by some "dark" bands like Ringworm or Integrity. The fact remains that this is a great hardcore album, truly fast-paced hardcore, angry, full of stops and starts, screamed from start to finish by a desperate and thrilling voice, without metal smears or anything else, produced by the wonderful Deathwish and with a stunning cover art by Jacob Bannon (when Converge is involved, it's hard to go wrong...).
This "In Place Apart" of 12 tracks was released in 2005, and in the meantime, the group released two more albums, "Fractures" in 2008 and "Lucky Me" in 2010, again for Deathwish. Excellent label mates of Killing the Dream are Lewd Acts, Pulling Teeth, Blacklisted, Cursed, hardcore formations that play with passion, heart, and mind. And it's very nice that in 2011 hardcore punk is still so heartfelt.
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By Hardcore_Kid
Lucky Me is a record that must be listened to at full volume, every single note and every single scream from Elijah must enter our body and become part of us.
One of the best groups in the modern hardcore scene, that with this album reaches its stylistic and compositional perfection.
