Day Of Contempt – The Will To Live

Epitaph Records continually surprises me. Like always, the label continually releases solid releases that tend to come out of nowhere and impress me. But, then again, they also seem to be branching out of their safety zone of melodic hardcore punk to newer genres. There’s the hip hop bands like Atmosphere, Sage France and The Coup along with the more acoustical/folksy music by the likes of The Special Goodness, The Lost Patrol Band and Nikola Sarcevic. Then, of course, there is the occasional emo/hardcore band like Converge or From First To Last. And while they’ve certainly had a few misses during the past while trying to extend their reach into various genres, they seem to be learning from their mistakes. The perfect example of that added knowledge comes with Australia’s Day Of Contempt debut EP, The Will To Live.

Now, its safe to say that Day Of Contempt isn’t your regular Epitaph band, but they do show some good promise in the rising scene of emo and hardcore. The teaser for their new full length, The Will To Live features six songs of epic proportion. The songs follow every emo trend possible, featuring just the right mixture of screams to appeal to the hardcore and screamo fans, but with enough melodic singing and harmonious vocals to make the rest of their fans grin. The songs tend to follow the same structure for the most part, and fail to really evoke much passion or to take over much memory in the listener’s brain as they belt out the six songs. There is the underlying hardcore platform on every song, with the heavy breakdowns and solid,steady screams followed by the silky smooth, clean vocals and the double guitar attack.

And while most of the songs are able to successfully stand out by themselves, Shattered Dreams And Broken Hearts tends to make the biggest impact. Here is where they bring in the big guns with Marta from Bleeding Through lending her keyboard talents and Eighteen Visions singer James Heart drops in for a few lines.

Sadly, it is still the same sort formula of emo cross bread with hardcore that you get everywhere. There isn’t really anything that makes them stand out in the crowd other than the label it’s on. It is definitely better than the label’s last effort with From First To Last, but still has some improvement needed before unleashing their full length.