Left for Dead

Left for Dead may have missed the initial wave of modern hardcore by, oh, a decade but their timing couldn’t be better. With their fiery aggressiveness and cacophonous vortex of distortion bashing away underneath a singer who clearly hasn’t heard the term "vocal nodes” or "wailing like a banshee,” the band release the live effort Eat Shit — a live album produced just enough to be audible and beautifully gritty — just when most bands have taken the genre to almost ludicrous lengths. While those guys claim hardcore roots despite unmistakably metal albums, Eat Shit is an effort that recalls the equally brutal but decidedly punk-influenced days of Tragedy and His Hero Is Gone; an era when metal was a term used more to describe what would line your boots or what you’d swing around in the circle pit, not the type of stomp box you use to get pig squeals out of your Flying V. All in all, it means that Eat Shit sounds less dated and far more imposing that it may have when the scene was a touch more "core” and a touch less "metal.”