SUBURBANITE:
Self-titled: 7”
This is another New York that sounds more like a Boston skinhead band from the ‘80s than they do anything else. I know the description makes the band sound apocryphal, but if this brand of top notch hardcore is becoming a trend, I wholly welcome it. If SSD had written songs about how isolated and awkward they were in the mid- ‘80s instead of making a bid for commercial success (and gotten a vocalist worth a shit), How We Rock may have sounded something like this. “Not the Same” is one of the meanest hardcore songs I’ve heard in a long time and the chorus riff is devastating. I like bands that play fast but can pull off slow songs without losing any of the fury. The record has an anxious and paranoid feeling throughout and I get the same feeling reading the lyrics to this as I did when I heard No Comment for the first time. I listened to this like eight times while writing this review and now I don’t trust anybody. –Ian Wise (Youth Attack)