Daggermouth – Turf Wars

There’s a show coming to Edmonton on May 10th that I’m quite excited for. Playing the show is Hostage Life, Set Your Goals, No Trigger and Daggermouth. At first, I was incredibly excited to see the first three of those four bands, Daggermouth I could care less about. I had never heard anything about them and for some weird reason (maybe because they’re opening for Comeback Kid right now) I thought they would be a hardcore band that I wouldn’t like. But after hearing their sophomore record, Turf Wars, Daggermouth have become the icing on the cake of that show; and now May 10th just can’t come soon enough.

Turf Wars is a breath of fresh air in an sometimes stagnant sea of releases. Clocking in at a mere twenty-two minutes, Turf Wars is a short album but a powerful one. It comes in with a punch and doesn’t let you rest for the next eleven tracks. It’s a steady stream of melodic hardcore, ripe with spastic drumming and gang vocals creating a mix between Set Your Goals, Good Clean Fun and The Shook Ones.

The songs are honest and sincere; and while somewhat similar to one another, there is still an intensity amongst the songs and album that can not be overlooked. Seamlessly transitioning from one another, the songs are blistering fast and very technical with a vocalist that floats above the music spitting out the direct and pointed lyrics. The lyrics are honest and pure, written so that they can only be taken in one way. They aren’t piled in intricacies, but laid out right in front of you. They seamlessly intertwines with the music too, because with some songs (Dan Don Get Off Your Fucking Phone and Fact: Mike Preecher Rollarblades) lasting only forty seconds, there isn’t time to hide anything. Instead, they lay it all out in front of you, no hold bars.

To try and describe the little traits and intricacies of this album would be a daunting task, but the fact is that it just works. It’s a cohesive album from front to back. Melodic and intense. Poppy and heavy. Hardcore and intricate. It is fast and unrelenting, in your face and consistent the whole way through. It may only be twenty two minutes long, but by the end of it all, you’ll be asking yourself what happened and wanting to listen to it again, and again, and again, and again…. you get my point. May 10th, it won’t come soon enough.