Black Friday 29

The Escape (reissue)

Written by: PP on 18/11/2010 00:48:33

Oh man, Black Friday '29 used to blow back in the day. They released an excellent European-styled hardcore album last year called "Black Friday 2009", which featured a bunch of fist-pumping, kick-ass hardcore anthems that balanced the meldoy and the yell on knife's edge but successfully so. Probably due to the success of this record, the band figured it's about time to put out a re-issue of their debut album "The Escape" from 2004, but unfortunately it's an album where the band haven't yet learned the lessons in songwriting and/or riff-based approach to hardcore yet, so it's focused on living the hardcore lifestyle strictly by the books.

The band still sounds largely like Comeback Kid, Bane and Terror, just without the melody of the former two and without the raw fury of the latter. The songs here are stereotypical hardcore to their core: yelled, easily decipherable vocals, and a heavy, but simplistic, chord-based guitar line designed to incite mosh-pits at the gigs but not much more. No Capital-esque melodic hardcore pieces are found as on their newest album, nor memorable gang shouts that would lift the disc out its stagnation and generic feel. I mean lets count, how many hardcore bands can you come up with who sound identical to the sound presented here by BF29? I can come up with at least six just off the top of my head, and they all resort to the same simple and oh-so-predictable format of hardcore that simply doesn't work without a melody injection or a properly placed gang shout to catch your attention. With bands like Your Demise, To Kill and others leading the way in Europe, a record like "The Escape" just sounds and feels like a plain boring affair in 2010: it can't be a good thing that after twelve active listening sessions to the record, I still struggle to mention a single song from the release.

It's too bad "The Escape" should be re-issued now because it puts a dent in my memory of Black Friday '29 as one of the more promising hardcore acts of Europe. On the positive side of things, at least they've improved significantly since then, but in all honesty I probably won't recommend this to anyone but collectors and hardcore fans of the band, because it is the epitome of an utterly and mind-bogglingly average hardcore album.

5

Download: Any track will do
For the fans of: Comeback Kid, Bane, To Kill, Terror
Listen: Myspace

Release date 02.04.2010 (originally in 2004)
Let It Burn Records

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