Unbroken
Life. Love. Regret.

"The things you own end up owning you."

Because maybe it's not always that easy. Because it's a spiritual decline. An affliction for the heart and a possession of the mind. A collapse of emotions. On some days, all our actions prove futile, demonstrating that there's nothing left. Because maybe even inspiration fails. Minute after minute, hour after hour. No, on some days, it would really take a miracle to get us out of bed. But the sum of our forces always gives us a reason to start again. Because maybe we just need to try. It's a vicious cycle. It's life. Love. Regret.

Because letting yourself be possessed by an album like this is not so bad in the end. A gigantic soundscape and lyrical tapestry, ahead of its time, that measures the entire "prism" of emotions, turmoils, and trepidations a human being can experience throughout their life. This is "Life. Love. Regret." Life, love, and regret. A title, a statement of intent.

Consider music (and its related contents) on a general level. Imagine it without genre divisions, a single, enormous entity flowing together like the waters of various tributaries ending in the same river. From the invention of sound recording to today, is there an album that sifts through the (existential) history of a man? The various problems, the various joys, the regrets, the crises? For me, yes, and it's the swan song of Unbroken.

An album that has become a true cult for many. That rises above everything and everyone, regardless of the musical genre. Lending yourself to listen to this work can be a momentarily unsettling experience. And the reason is what makes the album great. Leaving aside the album's lyricism, musically speaking it's like witnessing a BIRTH and a FUNERAL at the SAME TIME. The birth of the "New School" Hc and the death of the "Old".

Do you know when a single record can wipe out entire discographies of various groups? No, I'm serious, listen to believe. In the nineties, on the West Coast, it was impossible to find anything better. Only people didn't know it yet. Was it possible to carry out yet another revolution after "My War"? No. It was obvious, it is obvious, and it will always be obvious. But 10 years later, Mr. Claibourne (by the way, he now plays with some random jerks, former Botch and ex These Arms Are Snakes in Narrows; if I were you, I'd give it a listen) and company come damn close.

"Life. Love. Regret." is not talked about as a masterpiece or seminal record; but much worse (which might also be better): it's not the work of before and after, you can't split a genre in half with Unbroken. This is the purest and hardest watershed. It's the benchmark. It's simultaneously a birth and a funeral: Unbroken prepare everything for the definitive album of an entire genre, but then in the end, right at the most beautiful part, they seem to say: "No, maybe next time." But there's no going back. If you've really messed up, you move forward to work on a new ending. And they understood that too. In fact, they broke up right after.

No one had ever tried to talk about certain things through punk hardcore, and if someone had tried, they hadn't done it so well. There were the straight edge, the anarchists, and them (who were a bit of both) standing alone. And for heaven's sake, if you're talking about life, joy, and pain in a particular genre, and if no one cares, you take responsibility. Then if you want to complicate life by playing nine-minute punk songs (any reference to "Curtain" is purely coincidental) go ahead, but what do you expect? That Cult of Luna today "cover" you live? These were (are) Unbroken. Guilty of making a "Jane Doe" too soon, which no one, at the time, had understood (maybe not even themselves).

They were everything and the opposite of everything: punk, metal, crust, and even sludge at times. What do slightly "prominent" bands for the entire scene like: Some Girls, Narrows, Crushed On You, and The Locust have in common? Easy: former members of the same Unbroken. Because if in the end they really got covered by the Cult of Luna, there must be a reason.