Direct Hit! – Crown Of Nothing

If you’ve kept track of Milwaukee punk act Direct Hit!  Over the past few years, then you’ll know that their evolution has been highly ambitious.  For a fast paced pop-punk band with hardcore tendencies, they’re quite philosophical when it comes to life and death and the meaning of existence. Even their split with PEARS was a thematically woven masterpiece that spoke to the collaborative potential of two distinct bands sharing the same disc.  It marked a whole new expectation for creativity in blending together two bands.

Direct Hit!’s latest full length, Crown Of Nothing, is a lengthy trip into the eternal, questioning the foundation of belief by exploring the hypothetical mindset of angels and demons.  The band is fascinated by the the prospect of an infinite consciousness, and the challenge this would pose even to celestial beings. Opener “Different Universe” speaks of crossing over to the afterlife as the realization sinks in that “that you’re mining your way into another hell.”  The track sets the album’s tone with a sweeping celestial opening that brings to mind the existencial stylings of early Angels and Airwaves.  It’s an odd likeness, but between the slow echoic thumping, striking piano notes, and reverberating chords, it’s not far off.  The vocals sweep in gradually, as if catching a ride on a tumbling gale, enchanted by an almost cinematic underlay. In a word, it’s epic.  Once the track takes off, Direct Hit! makes known that Crown Of Nothing is not just business as usual in the punk scene.

“Welcome to Heaven” serves as a self-contained follow-up that introduces and explores the paradox of eternity.  Describing heaven as “a state of dumb contentment,” the band questions how one could transcribe purpose and fulfillment from directionless infinity.  Amidst a playful yet ambitiously composed pop-punk soundscape the band likens such a reality to an unintended hell. “PainBoredom” hits the nail on the head with a concentrated minute of guttural hardcore that strays far from pop and closer to the gnashing teeth of heavyweights like Black Flag and OFF!.  If the band sees heaven’s flaw as slack jawed, mind numbing boredom, then the alternative is endless physical pain, suffering and humiliation.  The answer isn’t cut and dry, emphasizing a binary dilemma that offers little to no escape in this perception of the afterlife. Other examples of gnashing hardcore punctate the track listing in “Perfect Black” and “Bliss Addiction.”  Considering that most of the album, like the peppy jump of “Losing Faith” and the saxophone solo sporting “Bad Answer,” plays into melodic tendencies, these moments of intensity offer notable landmarks along the way.

Once Direct Hit! establishes their central thesis they attack it from all angles.  There are no solutions offered, and at times their approach is downright cryptic, but they always leave an impact.  Songs like “Something We Won’t Talk About” are clear commentaries that connect earthly vices with eternal consequence and outcome in lines like “You’re a noose made of flesh,” later bridged to the grim, punitive prognosis that, “his ashes are needed to poison the seeds that he’s sewn.”  Perhaps the mellowest song the band has ever produced, “The Problem” affords listeners precious moments to digest the philosophical undertones of the first nine tracks before embarking on the final leg of the journey.

Crown Of Nothing is classic Direct Hit! with ambitions that greatly eclipse the traditional confines of the punk genre.  Will you get every reference and chapter’s deeper meaning and consequence the first time around?  Probably not. Within your lifetime? That depends if you discover the meaning of life. But it will likely inspire you to dig deeper, comb through the lyric booklet, and seek out the upcoming companion comic book series subscription that accompanies the album’s physical release.  The questions posed within Crown Of Nothing will outlive most contemporary philosophers and theologians, and have ultimately gone unanswered for millennia, but they’ve never been so ardently expressed within the confines of pop-punk. Ultimately, Crown Of Nothing may run a little long and be conceptually dense, but it’s made all the more enjoyable for it.