Safe Hands – Oh The Humanity

Hardcore is a fickle style. I am, by no means, a well versed connoisseur of all the different factors, facets and faces of the style but I’ve listened enough to understand certain things about it. First off, there’s a lot of bullshit hardcore there. It’s there for the masses (masses being subjective of course). They throw some pop in there and heavy breakdowns to try and pass it off as hardcore. Others try to horribly mix in some synth and vo-coders into hardcore. These bands are ruining the real essence of hardcore.

Australia’s Safe Hands are the opposite of that. They are hardcore epitomize – and I mean true hardcore.

Now, someone more in touch with the minutiae of the genre may disagree with me to some degree; but they’d be hard pressed to ignore the fact that Safe Hands know what the hell they’re doing.

Oh The Humanity is heavy, searing stuff. At just over twenty-three minutes, the EP is harsh and corrosive. It plays through with intensity and leaves you wanting more. The record meanders between harsh, angry sections (Suture Self for example) and intricate, soothing, eerily beautiful guitar work (like on Black Spring). It’s a juxtaposition that is needed to keep the album fresh and inventive. Take I Told You I Was Ill. It begins with a minute and half long spoken word introduction and then simply explodes with pummelling drums and coarse vocals. A minute later they pull it all back – the vocals remain at the edge of destruction but the drumming becomes tamed and the guitar work flourishes. It then succumbs into the sound of madness; and not in a bad way.

The sheer intensity and emotion embedded into every song seeps out of it. I call it hardcore, but screamo could not another nomenclature used to describe Safe Hands; and just like hardcore, Safe Hands do the term “screamo” justice as well.

Insanely well produced, Oh The Humanity begs to be replayed and replayed.  As I’ve said, I’m not ultra well versed in the true intricacies of the style (I know more about the bands that bastardize it than the ones who do it justice) and so to find similar comparisons is difficult for me. But I do know that this is good, solid stuff and one I’ll be recommending to my hardcore friends in no time; and you should be too.