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The Banner

Frailty

Written by: PP on 21/07/2008 02:08:17

\"This record\'s tuning is heavier. It is our loudest record, our fastest record, and by far our darkest record\", claims The Banner\'s vocalist Joey Southside about their newest record \"Frailty\". And he\'s right. It\'s rare to hear a record with as much relentless furiousness and sheer power as theirs. It simply sounds like a cargo-heavy freight train about to run you over at ridiculous speed, at complete disregard to your existence on the train tracks. The last time I\'ve felt so run over by a record before was when Converge unleashed their seminal \"No Heroes\" album on me almost two years ago. You\'ve been warned.

Based on that description alone, you should figure out we\'re dealing with stupendously heavy hardcore influenced hybrid of punk and metal. At times, The Banner sound like a metalcore band knee deep in hardcore punk, like huge bodybuilders on steroids.

Even though the southern influenced, haunted album opener \"Welcome Fuckers\" seems to suggest towards yet another Every Time I Die / Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster clone, the second track \"The Wolf\" mows you down flat on your face moments after its foreshadowing intro build up is over. Speedometer is cracked to the maximum whilst Southside\'s primal shriek penetrates your skull with the viciousness of an entrapped animal. And mentioned already I don\'t know how many times during this review, it\'s all tuned so freaking low that the heaviness scares away everyone who isn\'t familiar with the more extreme genres. This without having to delve into death metal at all.

And here\'s where my main problem with the album lies as well: it\'s just too fucking heavy to be perfectly listenable. At first, I thought my car stereo couldn\'t take the intense pressure of the chaotic drumming, but then I plugged it into my iPod and my ears received the same treatment. It\'s as if during the post-production stage, the band purposefully amped up the volume a few notches to sound even more muscular than they do already. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of sound quality, and many of the killer leads are buried underneath a similar effect that you get when your winamp equalizer volume is set too high: the sound seems to break, swagger, and tear in every song of the album.

If it wasn\'t for their ridiculous intent of sounding twice as heavy as all the other bands put together, we could have something potentially reaching towards the high clouds where Converge have been comfortably staying for over a decade now. But for now, The Banner and \"Frailty\" remains just an example of how heavy music is getting heavier by the day. For what it\'s worth, it\'s relentless punk & metal assaults should satisfy anyone craving for something fast and heavy as fuck without having to resort to death metal.

Download: The Wolf
For the fans of: Converge, American Nightmare, This Is Hell
Listen: Myspace

Release date 10.06.2008
Ferret Music