Blink blink blink blink.. Blink and you’ll miss them. Blink, and in actual fact you probably DID. In true metalcore superhero style, all enigmatic like, Thirty Seconds from Armageddon reformed, allowing one final chance to experience the frenzied brutality up close.
If the fickle fortunes of time, circumstance and age cruelly conspired against you like they did for me (meaning I too was unable to see them in their time and place) then you had your chance to see them once, although you probably decided to stay in, and watch Dave Lamb insult some drunk housewives on Come Dine with Me instead. You feeble pathetic excuses for homo sapiens. Hang your worthless heads in shame.
This gig was partnered with a discography disc collecting all previous efforts (eighteen in all) onto one handy piece of plastic. Mint. Here we have another case of a band temporarily getting back together, giving a quick course in why they were influential in a given genre, and a few demonstrations that nobody else ever got close, before they returned to dayjobs at the Organic food co-op/ IBM. And yet another case for wondering why some more recent bands hopelessly bother to try and emulate. Listen to something like “Eyes Bleed Fire” hurl itself fearlessly out of the void, tower implacably overhead and gaze down without pity or remorse. Shit. I feel inconsequential. As with any career-spanning discography, it has it’s highlights and downs.. Particular favourites being the xcanaanx split (“Lost” in particular)- all chugging guitars, climbing layering, raging over each other, and “Corrupt” with the misleading interlude, leading straight into a muddy morass, exasperated singing stabbing forth from the drowner, before flipping to a melodic end. In fact, I was pretty surprised by the diverse nature of the course of this discography, assuming that most of the material would be in the same kind of Deadguy style, it was pretty awesome to see that both live and recorded, they had much more to offer than a mere unimportant narrow vein. A curse upon being born years too late.
This was most welcome. Ah, when metalcore bands were actually singing about something of importance to them, or even something with any kind of relevance whatsoever, rather than some talentless and emotionless faeces about who’s got the best haircut/Nikes sneakers, or encouraging their fans to drag their knuckles around on the floor and hit each other ‘cos it’s more HARDCORE.