Labels: Magic Bullet
Review by: Alex Deller
For me, This Ship Will Sink have been one of the most invigorating hardcore bands of the past year or so. Despite having relatively few minutes worth of music to their name, they’ve still managed to leave an indelible mark, creating something that is interesting and inventive without once losing its rage or momentum: a pure hardcore band through-and-through, regardless of the sounds they happen to be pulling from their instruments at any particular moment. So it is with something of a heavy heart that I put this cd on the stereo, knowing that their goose is well and truly cooked. That’s right. Kaput. An untimely end to a journey I was enjoying a little too much.
By and large, the four tracks here are burlier, denser slices than those that preceded them. The grinding, metallic influences that were always present in the Ship’s sound seemed, at last, to have the band firmly in their thrall, making for a fucked cat’s cradle of songs that beat you about the head from every perceivable angle. Writhing between a multitude of whirling riffs and ideas, different voices roar, bellow and yell bloody murder at you while you’re trying to figure out how the hell they’re making all this racket with just a guitar, three throats and a drumkit between them. The heavier sound led me initially to think of Coalesce, and while after several listens this comparison still holds true, there’s also a hell of a lot more going on, a blending of sounds and styles so thorough that it takes no end of sleuthing to figure out where they all came from and where the heck they’re going. From fragmented, effects-heavy passages to gentle arpeggios and shards of the dark, twisted hardcore that bands like Page 99 made work so well, This Ship Will Sink have yet again managed to put together a clutch of songs that’ll knock you out of your boots on an emotional level while satisfying every pencil-necked chinstroker demanding more from their punk than the standard three chords and one-two-fuck-you approach.
This all adds up to a blistering end to a smart, passionate and pretty damn awe-inspiring hardcore band, and one of the few I’ll actually bother to mourn. They’ll be sorely missed.