Severed Head of State return with nine punishing
new tracks. Hard
driving riffs and angry vocals give this release a
real fist pumping
intensity. A lot of the songs are more mid tempo
in the tradition of mid
period Poison Idea and other hardcore punk bands
that took some cues
from Motorhead. Severed Head of State have been
going for ten years now,
but are a band with no geographic center and with
all members playing in
other bands. Guitarist Todd Burdette (Tragdy, His
Hero Is Gone, Warcry)
delivers some really searing guitar riffs on this
LP and the guitar tone
is perfect for the style, biting and corrosive
like battery acid. Jack
Control (World Burns to Death) has always
impressed me with his raw and
angry vocals and well thought out lyrics. A lot of
bands write about the
horror of war and man's inhumanity to man just
because it's what fits
the music. When I read Jack's lyrics I see that
he's looking beyond the
black and white pictures of war victims in the
history books. The
atrocities are not the result of one criminal act,
but of the recurring
process of unrestrained power and authority run
amok. The bleak lryics
and their focus on oppression and atrocity are a
searing reminder that
there is much to be done and things will probably
get worse before they
get any better. I've always though bassist Kelly
Halliburton
(Masskontroll, Defiance, Clusterbombunit, Resist)
had some of the best
style in hardcore dropping in some of his crucial
Discharoge style
"walking" bass fills. Drummer Chris Pfeffer
(Signal Lost, Storm the
Tower, Scorched Earth Policy) holds it all
together with some sick and
precise beats. The CD version of this release
also contains the Charge
Ahead and Fucking Butchery 7"s as bonus tracks.
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