Coke Bust – Lines In The Sand

Well, damn. I hate it when this happens.
Call it a case of “almost but not quite.”
File Lines In The Sand under Getting There.

I frequently run into the same quandary with hardcore that I do country ballads or, say, house music. The problem is this: 99% of the shit sounds the same to me and most of it is pretty boring. I mean, hardcore is obviously different in the sense that I do actually like at least some of what I hear, but it’s a rarity these days. I’m less forgiving of music in general and just have a bigger pool of bands and experiences to draw from. While live bands can be sloppy or melodramatic or whatever and still put a smile on my face, I’m less lenient with recordings. I expect more. And it’s a struggle when so many hardcore bands sound like they’re all just working from templates clearly laid down by Infest, Minor Threat or Citizen’s Arrest twenty-five or thirty years ago.

But the worst part? A lot of times I don’t even know what the hell I’m looking for. Sometimes a band rules for very clear, definitive reasons. But others? Sometimes it’s just that extra little oomph, that extra little bit of blistering hardcore pizzazz that sets a particular band apart from their peers. Sometimes it’s hardly definable, just a little something-something that showcases a band’s depth and emotional resonance and straight-up musical-fucking-badassedness that’s coming out of the speakers.

Well, whatever that particular thing is, Coke Bust doesn’t quite have it. Almost, but not quite.

As I expected from just looking at the packaging, Coke Bust is good – Six Weeks is a solid, reputable label and there’s a reason for that. This is a competent band comprised of folks from Magrudergrindand Sick Fix and they’re all clearly having a blast here. The lyrics aren’t of Propagandhi’s (or hell, even Good Riddance’s) quality, but at the very least they’re topical. (And shit, they’ve only got about a minute or so to make their point.) But hardcore really runs the risk of coming across as static and boring and there’s gotta be something more than just competency to make that transition from live (where this band undoubtedly rules) to record. You’ve gotta knock some socks off, and to me Coke Bust just sounds like a decent, fast hardcore band. They’re good, but not jawdroppingly great. The CD’s comprised of the Lines In The Sand LP as well as the Demo and Fuck Bar Culture 7”s. There’s over thirty songs here and it’s all breakneck and thunderous and scrappy as hell and at times a little sloppy. There’s singalongs, the occasional slow part that inevitably gives way to blazing drums and feedback-laced palm-mutes and gallops – they’ve got all the parts down. They’ve toured their asses off, they’re made up of a mixture of scene veterans and super-excited younger kids and again, their dedication to punk is clear. But that spark just isn’t there for me. Decent, but if you’re a hardcore band, I need more than decent to really sit up and take notice. People love the hell out of this band and I can see why, but Lines In The Sand just doesn’t do anything for me.