To battle listener’s fatigue, we present you We Already Lost The World by Birds In Row – a fantastic, emotional journey grounded in traditional hardcore.
Release Date: July 13, 2018 | Deathwish | Facebook | Bandcamp.
With this much good music around this year, it’s hard to know what to check out and what to leave alone. After all, nobody has time to check out everything. If it wasn’t for our well-structured lists and meticulous organization from our editorial team, I myself would struggle to keep my head up. To battle this fatigue and to bring you some fresh new music, I’m going to present you a very special record today. We Already Lost The World by Birds In Row is a fantastic, emotional journey through a world grounded in traditional hardcore. The record will be released on the July 13.
The first song that grabbed my attention while scrolling through the track list was “Love Is Political”. What drew my attention here is pretty clear; it’s a provocative title.
We merely get a glimpse of the abrasive nature of “Love Is Political” when the guitars strum a few chords before stopping. The bass is playing along with them and, to my pleasure, it’s quite audible in the mix, sitting perfectly at the bottom of it as a well of unending noise. Opposing the bass is the rather dry but not less noisy guitar tone that tickles the overtones out of every chord and note. All instruments push through with full force, giving us a mix of atonality and melody that blends together through the use of reverb and some light delay. The drums deserve special praise, as they perfectly hold the instruments down and provide constantly changing, sometimes even shuffling beats. This may goes unnoticed for a few listeners, but I would say the drummer is the real MVP here. Raw screams whip against the mellow background provided by the instruments in the middle section. Even though the composition changes ever so slightly, Birds In Row is exceedingly good at building atmosphere and bringing a unique, short-lived ambiance to every track.
Another track I want to highlight, not just for it’s incredible irony, but also for its artistic vision is “I Don’t Dance”. Why is this track so ironic? Because it’s easily the most danceable track on the whole record. The introduction is taken on by the bass this time, and the riff couldn’t be groovier if they tried. However, this wouldn’t be as creative a record as it is if the band didn’t know how to subvert expectations. As soon as the guitars and drums kick in, the archetypical hardcore with the by-now-known twist hits us in the face. Everything that comes beyond this point on “I Don’t Dance” shifts in and out of dancing in the streets to moshing to the beats.
The most incredible feat the band have reached with this record is that they have achieved a sound so fresh, authentic and raw in a genre where these words are thrown around like skittles at a birthday party. The instrumentation seems to have undergone some serious consideration regarding songwriting and the vocals are so sincere that you’d have to be cold as ice not to take them to your heart. This is my favorite hardcore release of this year by a long shot.
