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Where Fear And Weapons Meet: The weapon
16/01/13 || Habakuk
While they were formed as a simplistic hardcore answer to all the metal bands around them, Where Fear and Weapons Meet from Florida are actually one of these bands that, curiously enough, are pretty great from a metal point of view. And no, they sound nothing like Hatebreed, so quit your bitching already. Never saw what exactly it was that completely disqualified Hatebreed for some metalheads anyway, but I guess I see the point somehow. So again: WFAWM is nothing like them. Fuck acronyms, but fuck typing lots of shit every other line even more.
WFAWM’s debut album “The weapon” from 1999 shows a punk-oriented but heavy attempt at playing fast, blunt, catchy material. A bit like the kind of stuff Slayer had covered on “Undisputed attitude”, just in a more modern appearance, not just thanks to the relatively chunky but “down to earth” production courtesy of the late 90s. The songs rarely reach two minutes in length, which makes this album a great complete listen, and it’s got only about 20 minutes of playing time anyway.
The good thing is, WFAWM always avoided
all the pitfalls that often alienate me from hardcore. So I’ll take a
backwards approach here. I’ll make a little list of how this band and
album are not. If you agree that this is in fact a good thing, then be assured this band might be for you.
There are no:
-straight edge / “in it for life” attitude moralizations
-tough guy posings and overdone bro-isms
The lyrics deal with basic things in daily life and try give a positive angle, but without all the corniness of all those push-up soundtrack bands. Just simple, credible messages avoiding escapism as well as insults to anyone’s brain cells.
-yapping vocals
The reason why a lot of potentially great bands like the Gorilla Biscuits never did it for me. Sure, WFAWM are in that tradition somehow, but the “Alex Wall Street Justice”‘s vocals just have that bit of raw edge to them that sets them apart from that pack, and of course there’s everybody’s favorite: gang shouts! So yeah, the vocals are definitely the single best thing about this band.
-breakdown excesses
In fact, there are no breakdowns. There are riffs and occasional deviations from the d-beaty punk formula for example to half-time rhythms, but there is none of that e-string chug stuff. It all flows in classic hardcore fashion, which gives it a fair amount of aggression and variation without sounding run-of-the-mill. A bit of double bass use gives it a heavy edge as well, which is only too welcome to metal ears.
So there you have it. This is pretty old school sounding Hardcore, without all that shit the genre features today, but also without some of the – in my book – weaker traits it initially had. Sounds good? Is good. Check them out.
- Information
- Released: 1999
- Label: Revelation Records
- Website: Where Fear And Weapons Meet MySpace Fanpage
- Band
- John Pain: guitars
- Jason Deucifer: drums
- Ryan Primack: bass
- Alex Wall Street Justice: vocals
- Tracklist
- 01. The weapon
- 02. Sidetracked
- 03. Second chance
- 04. Full deck
- 05. Under the bridge
- 06. Waste away
- 07. Bright future
- 08. The man who knew too little
- 09. Perspective
- 10. Are you happy
- 11. Out of line
- 12. Speak the truth
- 13. Half full
- 14. Critical thinking
- 15. Fading
