The intro of Mychildren Mybride’s first song on their second album is a promise and a fakeout and they deliver both: “Faithless” starts like prog-rock , like ELP keyboards transposed to two guitars before they pause and hit you hard to jumpstart the album.
I tend to not write about hardcore here because I haven’t been a big fan of the form since, I dunno, ZZT folded. And because Helen covers it for Rock NYC.
The two times I have written about it here, once was to applaud Lamb Of God, who sounded louder than the Who when they were loud, for blowing Metallica offstage. And the other time was to discuss Empire Falls – a racist hardcore band, something they call “Negi-core”. The message is nightmarish but do we really need to be told racism is ignorant one more time? If you haven’t figured it by now perhaps you should wrap up your penis and go home. What I did like about Empire Falls was their transgressive vicious WRONGNESS. It sounded howlingly awfully good.
And Empire Falls is not a jolt on Mychildren Mybride. This hardcore band from Alabama are ferocious and intricate: they are nuanced in ways hardcore simply isn’t.
So back to hardcore. The Oi, bands, the “Negi-core” bands, all those “7 N—-rs Heads In a Freezer” bands -the RACISTS LOVE HARDCORE because it is WHITE NOISE… it is the only rock and roll form with zero black influence.
And it reminds me of the blues because both are FORMS NOT GENRES.
Which gets me back to Mychildren MyBride’s 2007 album Unbreakable. The new album is to be released in 36 days and 14 hoursish as i write so I bet their fans are salivating… fans? yup, 2.3M streams of “Unfaithful” on their myspace.
You can hear why. The form of hardcore is self-evident and despite all the watcha-coring, it never really moves out of form: voice wrenching vocals on top of white heat metallic riffs and four on the floor ear piercing drumming.
MCMB have all this but they have more.
There is an intricate weaving of guitars here, an arrangement, some might claim but I don’t, overarrangement, that keeps on catching you unguarded: keeps your attention in a form that often loses mine.
The drumming on “Circle The Sky” interlaces so compelling with the two guitar attack it completely runs riot over the song and over the album. Helen texted me to tell me to keep my ears open for the drumming, good idea but they don’t have a drummer!! i can’t believe that is a machine playing those triplets on “Choke” and i can’t believe the nonstop touring MCMB have no drummer…
My main complaint is with the vocalist with the proviso if you don’t wanna hear a man screaming you probably might not want to listen to hardcore -with a band that is all about a subtle (I know, hardly the word you’d expect) realigment of the way hardcor is arranged, the vocals are a little bit bring in the usual suspects.
I haven’t mentioned the lyric content. Mychildren Mybride are a Christian band, the sort Wheels writes about all the time. Which probably explains the toning down of rock nyc’s altercations with the band on the comments section of Helen’s “Haste The Day” post yesterday. The lyrics ride the self-doubt, redemption just as you might expect -though there is a literateness that might take you by surprise. Since the tension can’t be in faith/disbelief (which would sorta defeat the purpose, instead like most Christian bands of all types, they share Jesus in their souls and in their daily lives:
“I’ll search for what mother nature finds most divine
Let’s get lost in this moment, I’ll do anything to make you mine
Inhaling each other’s ecstasies, admiring your God-given design
Together forever, finally our souls can intertwine.”
And then everything drops out but a piano taking us back home.