Alright knuckle head, listen up! You might not be able to bake a potato with all the
brain power you’ve got and a 9 volt battery but that don’t mean you never
deserved nothing nice. Like that sweater your grandmother knit for you or that
time your older sibling convinced your hot cousin (you know which one) to give
you a kiss on your birthday. Well now you’ve got one less thing to complain
about in your miserable, ungrateful life. Poughkeepsie, New York hardcore band
Mindforce dropped an EP this winter and it will smack the sorry look right off
that wad of pepperoni you call a face. Swinging Swords, Chopping
Lords follows up
Mindforce’s well-received 2018 LP Excalibur with four tracks of mean, trim
east-coast hardcore that will get you ripping up the pit in a Leeway tee with a
mane of long tangled locks befitting an extra in a Nuclear Assault video. It’s
the kind of teeth-kicking, low-life-or-no-life punk that thrived in the yellow,
damp street lights and piss saturated back-alleys of New York City in the early
‘90s. A time of legend when Cro-mag-num man was king and the only law was
Murphy’s Law. The EP opens up with the title track, a slow but potent,
gear-grinding, monster thrasher that takes big, black-jack fisted swings at
your ears before fizzling out like a match in the rain. “Fratello” picks up
where the previous track ended with heavy growly bass lines and dejected,
seething chords that pound the pavement like it’s trying to disrupt utility
service for the whole block. The tempo ramps up on “Hope Dies in the City” with
its dicing cross-over grooves, circle-pit spin-cycles and a crushing, breakdown
outro. All this leading to the final boss, “Hellscape” a rush of brash, fiery
guitars with a militant beat that feels like it is marching against your sanity
and sense of self-preservation with each cutting chord and kidney-punching
snare slap. Drop a needle on this sucker and then you can stop acting
like no one ever gave you nothing worth anything you prick.
