To The Lions

Their may be about one million "heavy-ass breakdowns” on this record but unlike their chug-happy peers, To The Lions seem to be recalling something a little more meaningful than the last Underoath record. Drawing on the days before Victory Records became the pop emo cry-fest it currently functions as, To The Lions make old school hardcore that doesn’t quite stretch as far back at the ’80s but sits perfectly in the mid-’90s with bands like Integrity, Earth Crisis and Undertow. Having self-released a free EP of heavy as shit demos over a year-and-a-half ago, this full-length comes as a welcome addition to the band’s already impressive musical canon. Featuring former members of Grade and Confine, they have enough credibility to do as they please and Baptism of Fire sounds like a band doing exactly that. Songs like "Ride the Apocalypse,” featured on their demo, sound great, with full, clean production, and new songs like "The Forsaken” are just as good, if not better, than the band’s first batch of material. This is great, honest and heavy fucking hardcore.