This is one of my favorite hard core albums ever! The album
start with the instrumental song "Inception", a really cool song that
creates a kind of dark atmosphere to get you into the right mood for
the album. I usually don't like instrumental stuff, but this song's
brilliant!
"When I Die", the second track on the album, introduces you to Focal Point Hard Core: a technically really strong hard core band with a vocalist who has this amazing hoarse voice. The fact that there are two guitarists in this band results in great pieces of guitar work, ripping you out of your chair while you're screaming along. Many times, the songs on a hard core album seem to sound like one another. Not this time. Each and every song has it's own character. Take for instance "Broken Bonds". It begins with Robbie whispering about a broken friendship, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. Then his voice changes. He screams "I need you back!" and the guitars kick in.
The lyrics of this album (check them out in the
Lyrics section of this site) are critical of society as it appears at this
moment. Singer Robbie Imrisek asks himself where this world is going with all
kinds of nasty things like abortion, misabuse of children, ignorance,
intolerance and people drifting away from God.
Back to the music again. The title track of this album has these terriffic, hard
guitars though the sound keeps 'clear'.
"Homicide" is one of the heaviest songs on this album, after a normal
start, it has these amazing, muffled guitars. And the 'chorus' just can't get
out of your head: "KILLER!".
A really nice little riff thing comes out of your stereo when
"Enraged" begins. Then you get this really laid-back rythm. Slowly,
the song gets harder. After almost 2 minutes (!) Robbie starts to do his
screaming thing. This song has this amazing bridge!
If you own Songs From The Penalty Box vol. 1 or if you ever heard it, you
probably know "Neglected". This is an amazing song with really
brilliant double bassed drums and, again, some great guitar licks! "No
Return" and "Upright" are as good as the other songs on this
album. Therefor, i would like to give some attention to "Deception",
song #10 on the album. Amazing, amazing, amazing... these guitars, the changes
in pace, the way the song sometimes seems to explode while on other moments,
things are okay again...
This album ends in style with an instrumental song called
"Attainment". A really great way to recover from 40 minutes of Hard
Core...
To round things up, this album scores 93 on a scale of 100. (It would have been much less if the instrumental songs had been worse, but they rule!) Need i say more?
Martijn