Abandoned Hearts Club

This initial four-song debut offering from the Abandoned Hearts Club, featuring ex-members of Spread the Disease and New Day Rising, is one of the most promising warning shots of impending doom to be heard in the aggressive underground in years. Maintaining a strictly DIY ethos (recorded and released themselves), The Initial Confessions of: offers a very raw, but proficient, take on a variety of influences (the price of DIY) yet is a remarkably coherent release and one that nicely sets the musical standards for the Abandoned Hearts Club. Offering varied, eclectic and simply devastating metallic mayhem, not as strictly technical as some but still complex and emotional, the Abandoned Hearts Club offers up a punishingly raw, dynamic take on metallic hardcore, mixed with noisy, unorthodox playing and simply apocalyptic throat destroying vocals. However, they marry their aggressive sound to electronics in a way few hardcore bands have ever attempted. Not just a segue way between batterings, the electronic violence here swells and squeals, establishing atmosphere and augmenting the songs, recalling latter day Training For Utopia in parts, but much more aggressive, retaining the complexity and hostility of hardcore, even as it seeks to grow beyond. Criminally short in duration, clocking in at barely 14 minutes, The Initial Confessions of: is still a simply stunning debut.