Labels: Day After
Review by: Andy Malcolm
So you think you’re cool huh? So, tell me this… Do you own the new Four Hundred Years? Ok, you do. Well, do you own it on TEN INCH? I thought not. You are simply not cool. If you bought the CD, you blew it. You are a loser, you have no scene cred. Ha ha!
Aherm. Now, where was I?
The new Four Hundred Years of course! And I keep writing their name as 400 Years! Which is wrong, of course. This is their last LP, though I did read that a posthumous 7″ was going to come out soon-ish. It’s limited to 8 tracks of their familiar post-hardcore, emo-tinged assaults. I was at first apprehensive as to how good this was, but it seriously grew on me after a couple of listens. They have the hefty Shotmaker influence going on with lots of choppy, aggressive guitar parts, but they’ve laced it with much more melody at times. Vocals are also slightly different to the last record, though still retain that scratchy, desperate screamy style. Opener “If You’re A Joke I Don’t Get It” really stamps their style change straight away, stealing a riff from the best Get Up Kids song (the original, and only good version of “I’m A Loner Dottie…”) to round things off.
Where Four Hundred Years have always scored is their talent to nail that vital emo-groove. “The New Imperialism” would have fit well on the last LP, whilst “They Weren’t Hiding At All” recalls when 400 were more influenced by Bob Tilton on their earlier stuff. At least till it goes all early Get Up Kids again as it goes a long. Weird. Best track is the penultimate “Who’s Driving This Thing Anyway”, with a classic moody breakdown before the swirly, ‘end of the world’ finale that is straight from the Yaphet Kotto school of emo. Fantastical, gotta love those sung backups. The twinkly instrumental that finishes off the record is rather special too.
It’s a bit off to compare Four Hundred Years to other bands as they are pretty influential in this style themselves, but if you’ve not yet heard them, you’d be into this if you number Shotmaker and Yaphet Kotto among your favourite bands. Suture and Trasmit Failure are better records in my opinion, but this stands strong in it’s own right. Good stuff. And it’s always nice to be able to say: ex-Policy of 3. Just feels right.