aaamusic | On 08, Nov 2010

Subtlety. A beautiful thing if used well. It can make people believe things they never even knew they were being told, it can make a sermon sound like a chat with a friend, and sometimes it is just not needed. Sometimes you need someone screaming into your face, clubbing you in the ears with a one fingered guitar riff, you need bass sounds that make you evacuate your bowels and you need drumming that sounds like a maternally outraged Gorilla has been plonked behind the kit and told if it makes enough noise it will get its offspring back. Needless to say, Chickenhawk give us several spades worth of this and then some. Fuck Bring Me the Horizon, Bullet for My Valentine and their “Metalcore” ilk, this is the real crossbreed of the heaviness of metal and aggression of hardcore punk. Now if they could just change the song… they have? Oh.

See that’s the thing. It’s all very heavy and “broootal” as some might say, and it comes with a refreshing lack of the teenage angst that has flowered in metal recently like some cancerous carnation (probably, singer Paul Astick sounds like he tried to get the live sound in the studio by breaking all his teeth before every take), but it gets old. Quickly. And it probably sounds epic live, but I’m not in some Camden sweat pit with a bunch of twenty-something’s who all look like they dyed their hair by dunking it in a Home base paint mixer, I’m at home, and it’s like watch snooker on a black and white TV, I need some colour! This is coming from a Belle and Sebastien fan, so it’s likely that I’m missing the point but the odd incongruous sounding experimental intro before the inevitable seven fingered guitar riff comes in doesn’t create variety, it just makes them sound slightly pretentious. Maybe even desperate for a little avant-garde kudos.

That said, “I Hate This, Do You Like It?” swaggers along like a mathcore Gallows, with the most laughably complex intro riff this side of Dream Theatre and a chorus that you can bob your head to without looking like you’re vigorously agreeing to something for fear of death, but after that the album sinks back into an “I can play this fast, can you?” contest and Astick’s vocal style of either “I’m going to kill you” screaming, or  “I’m going to torture you” whispering grates heavily, especially after Mandarin Grin shows he can actually sing very well.

Like I said, I’ve probably missed the point with this album, I’m not particularly familiar with this style of music but all we’re after is some variety, and is hardcore punk really all about sounding exactly the same? Before answering that listen to Black Flag, Bad Brains and Fugazi in quick succession, three bands that couldn’t really sound that much more different all playing forms of punk rock, I suppose you could say that those are legends in the field and it’s unfair to compare such a young band to them but still… I’ll close by saying that Chickenhawk are a living example of the fact that too much of a good thing is bad for you, you can have a really kick arse guitar riff that sounds like all of Hades singing the Dead Kennedy’s discography, but stretch it over an album, a career possibly, and it will get old very, very soon.

Author: Will Howard