Short, sharp and particularly vicious; no, not a dose of the clap, but Paint It Black‘s new album. Helmed by former Kid Dynamite axe hero Dan Yemin you’d expect PIB to have some pedigree, and sure enough, Paradise is a solid album that doesn’t break any new boundaries, but sits comfortably in the upper leagues of hardcore at the moment.
Paradise zips along incredibly quickly, with most of the songs being sub-2 minutes and running into each other. Tracks like ‘Nicaragua’ and ‘Pink Slip’ do that whole ‘sludgy chugging riff’ into ‘frantic beatdown bit’ to fairly effective results, but it’s when PIB turn up the volume that they’re best. ‘Labor Day’ and ‘Exit Wounds’ are storming examples of abrasive hardcore with some excellently throaty vocals. Yemin sits firmly on the shouting side of things, and while he doesn’t quite have the depth and body that Shevchuk brought to Kid Dynamite, he still acquits himself very well.
Thematically, it’s an interesting take on modern hardcore. Mixing both the personal and political spheres, Paradise steers commendably away from the usual cliches. While it may be hard to really discern between the themes because of the constant soundtrack of balls-to-the-wall guitars and machine-like drumming, PIB deserve some recognition for not sticking to the same old rubbish that, if we’re being honest, was covered pretty comprehensively a good decade and a half ago.
As they’ve come up with one of the better hardcore albums of recent months, and for at least trying something different, Paint It Black should be commended. It’s not a revolution but a good example of a genre finally beginning to reclaim itself from the fashion that pollutes it.