Until Your Heart Stops

Errors

Written by: TL on 08/05/2011 14:28:20

Considering the careful selection process I apply when I have to select which of our promo submissions I want to write about - that is listening to some 30 seconds of each - it baffles me that I now and again end up taking something from what is to me the most alien of rock/metal's genres; namely hardcore. That however, is the case with "Errors", a record that Califonia-based Until Your Heart Stops call their debut LP, despite the fact that it only barely clocks in around the 19 minute mark.

Fortunately for me, "Errors" shows no intention of merely recycling tired genre clichés in any sort of typical offering for the shorts-clad breakdown-addicts. Rather it takes the genre towards more experimental horizons, swaying back and forth between busy, discordant bursts of chaos, as seen in numbers such as "Zodiac Signs" and "Repressed", and more simplistic, bleak, punk'n'roll sounding moments, like on "Errors", which proves recognizable via a soul-fully wailing guitar dominating the second half of the song.

Generally, I'd liken UYHS to bands like Gallows, Warship or The Ghost Of A Thousand, yet ask you to imagine them with injections of Converge or Dillinger Escape Plan type madness. The compositions are tight, staying true to punk rock aesthetics by largely limiting themselves to one to two minutes of length. Similarly, the vocal work is fittingly bitter and malicious, although not very varied, as the band's frontman sticks to a classic hardcore punk snarl for the vast majority of the disc.

All of this is wonderful if the idea of some mean, fast, and surprisingly nuanced hardcore-punk, appeals to you, but for me personally, I must admit that I prefer UYHS when they let their songs develop from 'mere' explosions of energy, into slightly more ambitious structures. The closing progressive track "Fish Ranch Road (The Wanderer)" for instance, which stretches to a mammoth (for the band) length of six minutes, only gets increasingly interesting as brass instruments are introduced towards the end of the song. Generally speaking, songs like that, and the other 'long' songs (those that are around two minutes long) strike more of a chord with me, and if I was to listen to UYHS in the future, I'd hope to see even more of this experimentation, to further counter-balance the short and chaotic songs.

Either way, speaking of the record overall, it manages to coerce some reluctant recognition of quality out of me, and considering that its parent genre is among those in music that I normally find the least interesting of all, then that is actually no small task. Considering this, I won't hesitate to recommend it to those hardcore fans who appreciate bands that push the genre's envelope, even if it is still, for better and worse, so bleak and uncompromising that it will hardly win the genre too many new fans.

7

Download: Errors, Fish Ranch Road (The Wanderer)
For The Fans Of: Warship, Gallows, The Ghost Of A Thousand
Listen: untilyourheartstops.bandcamp.com

Release Date 01.03.2011
Creator-Destructor Records

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