All Selected

Next Step Forward

Written by: PP on 05/06/2008 16:39:24

Sweden's All Selected are a brand new band who've just about managed to put together their debut EP called "Next Step Forward". Don't blame yourself for never having heard of them before. Judging by the band's Myspace listens numbers, I must be in the first 500 people or so to have sampled their music in the past. Christofer & Andreas normally play in Sweden's best melodicore band Adjusted, which deems All Selected merely as a fun side project for the guys. This is a shame, as the band actually has great potential, but then again none of us want to see Adjusted breaking up anytime soon.

So, what "Next Step Forward" gives the listener is five tracks of ferocious hardcore punk, stretched with a few melodic elements. The vocalist's soaring screams are aggressively in your face at all times, suggesting tracks like "Where No Angels Soar" will do some serious damage in a live environment. The band itself describes their sound as "cool desperate hardcore", which I'm inclined to agree with, as all five tracks are fierce, drawing as many impressions from hardcore as they do from punk rock. You can imagine the kind of cocktail you get from two genres as angry as these two.

To their credit, the band does experiment outside the pedal-to-the-floor and scream/yell formula in some songs, adding some speed changes and calmer moments to contrast their fury. Kind of like Thrice on "Identity Crisis", except more furious and less compromising. Check out especially "The Silence Of A Nation" for a song in this direction. The band keeps it tight throughout the record, confining the sound to a tiny space, which obviously makes for a more intensifying instrumental landscape.

The good thing about "Next Step Forward" is that All Selected haven't forgotten the importance of a memorable chorus. "The Bleeding Machine" and the two aforementioned songs all have one that'll have you screaming along to the tracks - my girlfriend is sitting in my room laughing as I'm silently screaming along while listening to the record on my headphones. "Normandie" is the only track out of the five which lacks this effect. Fortunately, the album is closed with "Closing Heavens Gate", a song which could easily be categorized under "furious speedcore", whatever the hell that might mean in anyone's head.

Given that "Next Step Forward" is the very first release from the band, things are looking very bright for the future of the band. All Selected might not be the most original punk/hardcore hybrid out there, but that doesn't matter when the songs are played with as much honesty and intensity and the ones here. Can't wait for the full length.

7

Download: Where No Angels Soar
For the fans of: early Thrice, Armsrace, Comeback Kid
Listen: Myspace

Release date 01.03.2007
Precore Productions

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