Manchester Punk Festival Releases 37th Compilation
Manchester Punk Festival have released the 37th volume of their compilation series ahead of this year’s festival. Manchester Punk Festival Vol. 37 is…
All In A Dream - Revelation Records
Having been a fan of the Washington DC hardcore scene for many years, I was very intrigued when this latest album from Praise landed in my mail box. Can we possibly still be getting fresh new music that has grown from the heart of a community of music that included some of the seminal bands of hardcore including Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Scream, who gave Foo Fighters Dave Grohl a base to fly from,and the band that broke all boundaries Fugazi. So how do you not fall down a very deep pit of being just another soundalike, a band that simply copies and never aspires to be more. The answer is you do what Praise do, you take all that history, add a huge splash of yourself into it, and lets be honest here, if you play this style of Punk, there is no way your ever going to throw the shackles of comparisons fully, so embrace that, yet bring even more to the party like this band have.
‘All In A Dream’ kicks us off on this one, straight to the title track, a song that lives on its lyrical content, a song of hope, a song that sees a world in that looks 3D not a flat boring place, is it a dream or is it today’s reality?. The whole album takes the hardcore base and liberates itself into the big wide world. ‘Hotline Memory’ has a lyric that kind of lends itself to the musical sound of Praise, whether or not this is the true intention, it works for me, “I tried to run but couldn’t get away, I tried to leave but still I stayed, It follows me in everything I see”, a sound that fights to get away, but actually doesn’t want to. Melody is a point of view rather than a actual hook or a combination of riffs, Praise add what is almost anti melody, a combination of lyrical timing and beats give songs like ‘Limited Sense Of Responsibility’ a catchiness that belies the lack of pop sense, then you have ‘Life Unknown’ that kicks of with a delicious bass riff, musically drags its sorry ass kicking and screaming along the floor for a while, yet still fills your head with a kind of earworm (clever crazy shit, is what I’m really saying), but then that is what always intrigued me about DC hardcore as a thing.
To finish the album and a journey through the sands of time, past, present, and future, ‘Life Unknown’ a beautiful and totally original style of sound mixed with words of reflection, then ‘Keep Hanging On’ with another of those bass lines that sit just above the back line and give a melodic background to a piece of eclectic sound, that as we mentioned in the beginning, is exactly where this album sits in the spectrum of existence.
Stunningly simple, yet astoundingly complex sounds and words that combine to be fully in the now, by combining all the wonders of what can be gleaned from a Hardcore grounding. Like the lyric says “People aren’t one thing, we can grow… we can change.” So can music.
Go get your copy from Revelation Records
Find the band and connect on FACEBOOK