Dead Inside - One Fine Day - split - 7

Labels: Household Name
Review by: Andy Malcolm

Although you can’t tell from that picture up there, I spilled orange juice on my copy of this record this afternoon, a long with a few others. Oh, the humanity! Almost comparable to the team when irregular Collective-ite, Chris Thrash, related to me the story of an occasion when a drunken Nick Enslaved stayed at his house, and stole his bed. When Nick woke up, he was appalled to see that a bunch of Chris’ records that lay by the bed were covered in liquid. Fearing he had pissed all over Chris’ collection, an inspection was made, but it soon proved to simply be a glass of water that had been left precariously close, which had been carelessly knocked over during the night. I am sure there is a moral to this story.

Anyway, here we have the first ever release by Dead Inside, and yes, I know there is another band on the other side, we’ll come to them shortly. Dead Inside spin out 3 songs of twistin’ hardcore, relatively straight forward but with a lot of special touches that make me think of some of the earlier Gravity releases and other mid 90’s hardcore. I’m thinking a long the lines of John Henry West and Heroin, though with shouty rather than cried/screamy vocals. And perhaps a level of chaos is missing at this stage. “Another Barricade” breaks things off, mixing in aggression and a touch of melody in good quantity, a little off-kilter at times and varies the vocals on the chorus, getting a bit harsher. “Sidewaysglance” keeps the rock coming nicely, and has an awesome Mirk Kirsch type feel to the music when it gets faster and dischordant. Things are rounded off on “FullCircle” which flies out, relying on a lot of repetition and rolling bass to push the song a long. There’s an awesome melodic break in this song that sounds a bit like Dag Nasty too. Overall, things are a little rough round the edges, but this style always sounds best when that’s the case.

To say that One Fine Day is a let down after the Dead Inside stuff is an understatement. Metally hardcore with really strange sounding vocals. Lots of dischordance and a muddy recording doesn’t really help matters out, and I can’t see myself coming back to this stuff, it has it’s moments but the chuggy metal bits are not really my thing. The second song is some kind of spooky electronic remix. Fair enough.

Dead Inside will usurp Imbalance as the best hardcore band in the nation very soon. Proof is on this 7″. And it’s about time we had some bands over here doing something a little different to the rest (even if it’s been done before elsewhere).