Review Thursday: Comeback Kid / BXI / Run With The Hunted


Run With the Hunted

Destroy All Calendars
Panic Records

Phoenix, Arizona’s Run With The Hunted is a band to watch out for in so many ways. Upon first listening to this four-track album you can quickly hear a difference to all the other bands out there. The technical prowess of the band is a ridiculous amalgamation of heavy and beautiful. The change-ups are confounding and can sometimes switch into math-core effortlessly before the unified anthems resume. The vocalist lends a poignancy to the band to create a new but familiar form of hardcore that will soon devour the world. The sheer desperation, contempt and emotion of his voice is something that few people have mastered in any musical genre, and he seems to accomplish it all while screaming his guts out. Run With The Hunted have signed to Panic Records and will be releasing their full length debut album in the near future, your job is to love them now, before they blow the roof off of the music business. 

Mat "Runt" Barrot


BXI
BXI EP
Southern Lord

Rock music makes for some strange bedfellows. Case in point: The new BXI EP, a collaboration in-between The Cult's Ian Astbury and Japanese noiserock maestros Boris. A mutual admiration in-between the two acts led to the creation of this disc, an uneven collection of four by-the-numbers rock tunes, complete with a cover of The Cult's "Rain".

The consensus after repeated listens is that it's kind of like checking out a series of strange mash-ups. The vocals don't quite match the music, and even at its best (EP closer "Magickal Child") the music and the vocals don't quite mesh in the way that they're supposed to with this format of rather traditional tunes.

Perhaps the band and Astbury were aiming for this very effect when recording the EP, which wouldn't be surprising considering Boris' rather interesting discography. Still, such a strange pair-up is bound to be worth checking out for marquee value alone, although this is geared more towards Boris purists, and not necessarily to the casual Cult fan.

Brian Hastie


Comeback Kid
Symptoms and Cures
Distort Entertainment

Testicular fortitude, that’s what Comeback Kid have an over abundance of. Hailing from Winnipeg, Manitoba this five-piece hardcore act has broken into markets all over the world with their sing-along style. Since the departure of original vocalist Scott Wade, former guitarist Andrew Neufeld took the mic with an unimagined outcome. Neufeld had a voice that surpasses Wade in every way possible. The intensity, frustration, and call for unity coalesced to create this new CBK and fans everywhere collectively sighed.  While most hardcore bands continue practicing and refining their abilities until they switch over to playing a more metal hybrid version of hardcore, CBK has gone another direction with the newest album Symptoms and Cures. The new incarnation has all the hardcore you could want with a return to the punk sounds that captivated and unified generations. This is such a perfectly balanced record, the heaviness, melodies, and pure artistry of CBK is one that every Canuck should support. You should buy this album because CBK chose not to sell out and give you the metal tinged HC that is so common lately, and that, kids, takes balls.

Mat "Runt" Barrot