Labels: Dim Mak
Review by: Unknown
Has any band ever been such a talking point before? Ok, well maybe the Locust 3 or 4 years ago, But right now, for better or worse everyone has an opinion on the Oath. Be in the gnarled old fastcore warrior or the new screamo upstarts… Everyone is sure they have the right take on it. So lets take in the facts as we know it…
A debut 7″ with a million different covers. (yes including pasted on with jizz ones.) A 9″ with various covers to offend the moral majority. Though before it came out there was two pressings as a 10″ with not shocking covers. One song from that record baiting Heartattack. Several months of back and forth with Martin Crudos in a pseudo war of words about the potential Oath / Limpwrist split. Rumours of Albini recording the new album. Two members of Oath end up being shit workers for Heartattack. And then the record finally comes out on Dim Mak. (minus Albini)
So what can be drawn from that? Well you would think that doing work for Heartattack you might that they still had some fire inside them that they were going back to their roots and bring the hardcore for the kids, But alas no. Dim Mak have seen fit to have a little barcode on the back of this cd, so I wonder how that will go down with the Heartattack crowd… I expect it not to be mentioned or maybe the lp doesn’t have one? But seeing as the whole heartattack team is going the way of mrr 2 years ago and becoming stale and boring then who cares right? Maybe its ok now, but only for our staff. They need a kick up the arse and to get rid of some of the deadwood… why would you have guys like Nate from the Oath giving bullshit reviews to any record he gets sent and Mark using Heartattack to clarifty his love of dubious Scandinavian metal… The leaky barrel of Oaths hardcore credibility is holding less and less water as we go on.
As a quick aside, I am not even going to go into the recent UK tour and the fact that Oath and Some Girls believe that they are worth £600 a night ($1000+)…
So this is the debut full length, not counting the bonus track that is a bunch of silence and a crappy jam it is just over the 20 minute mark and has fifteen tracks on it and do I really need to tell you how it sounds? Fast hardcore with some neat guitar work and that trademark Mccoy yap… You can not go wrong. To base this soley on its musical merits I would say it’s an amazing piece of work, as a 45rpm lp it does what many fastcore records cant and that is keep you interested from the first riff too the last fade out. Lyrically its bitter and sarcatsic as you would expect from Mccoy, my only gripe is why the typed lyrics this time? Whats wrong with writing it out like all the Bronson records and previous Oath stuff?? As we are on that note, the packing kinda sucks… Blank pages, some silly statement trying to show who cool they are, a few blurred photos and the lyrics typed up. That’s it. So in other words, its crap!
This leaves the Oath in a tricky position, they are not shocking or different enough to stand off and pull off some mainstream recognition like the Locust have done as next week 625, Deep Six or Six Weeks will put out a fast hardcore record that will blow this away… So what are they? Washed up scenesters trying to go down all guns blazing or a contemporary hardcore band that is looking forward? I’m going with the former…
“hi, we are the oath, and we are here to look cool and appear trendy and we really hope that the screamos like us.. we have a snotty attitude as we are so different and special and we play fast hardcore and were in cool bands before” sorry chaps, fastcore was so 2001.