Graffiti font! American flags! Outer boroughs! It’s the whole schtick. This re-release is pretty cut-and-dry late ’80s NYHC. It retains the short-fast-loud DNA with some post-YOUTH OF TODAY breakdowns and mid-tempo beats. There’s even Cause for Alarm-style guitar shredding for good measure. The poor audio quality makes this more of an historic document than a genre highlight.
This band was featured on the famous New Breed comp back in the day and represented very much “the style at the time” for NYHC. After releasing a vinyl comp of their old demos, they’re back in the ungodly year of 2026 with new material…sort of. Some of this is re-recordings of older songs, some is outright new, but it reminded me heavily of what bands like SUBZERO and SHEER TERROR were doing in the mid-to-late ’90s—more melodic hardcore, but still breaking it down in the bouncy NYHC fashion (there’s an instrumental here that would have made me leave a mosh-sized hole in the world if I’d heard it live when I was eighteen) with the requisite toughness baked in. I feel like that era/sound of NYHC isn’t lauded as other eras, but it was formative to me and I love this stuff, so this is right up my alley. Wish it was longer, but I’m glad the band stuck to their guns and made this kind of NYHC groove for the old heads (not the oldest heads), and hope they keep at it.
