Kudos to Visible Noise for a) signing a couple of really good UK bands recently and b) for letting people have promos of this record a good few months early. There’s nothing worse than receiving a record two days before release and then being pestered for a review three days later. It’s impossible to form an opinion unless the record is really good, so props to VN for letting this go out with plenty of time to form an opinion. And reading some of the comments about this record, and some of the weird Enter Shikari comparisons, it would appear that they haven’t actually listened to this record in full, despite the amount of time it’s been available.
Your Demise are one of the UK’s brightest hopes and are starting to get recognition in some of the more mainstream UK magazines. This record, and their deal with Visible Noise, will help no end. ‘Ignorance…’ isn’t a perfect album, but it’s still a good one. It’s powerful and emotional and very hard hitting, all traits you’d expect from a good hardcore record. ‘Black Veins’, ‘Burnt Tongues’ and ‘Dreaming of Believing’ are all great songs. The riffs are solid, the beatdowns hard…it’s all here. What sets this record apart from many others are the, at first anyway, odds interludes which feature loops, samples and rave elements. I guess this is where some of the Enter Shikari comments have come from. There are three interludes which feature a whole range of dubby samples and they’re all pretty good. They break up the intensity of the album really well in a kind of Aphex Twin type way and while hardcore purists may wonder why the band have sprinkled these tracks onto the album, it does actually work well.
‘Ignorance Never Dies’ is a really good, solid album. It’s the band’s best work to date and I’m pretty sure will get them the plaudits from a wide range of media outlets. I don’t quite think they’ll shoot up to Gallows-style prominence, but in terms of putting UK hardcore on the map, this could well help break down a few doors and encourage more people to check out homegrown talents.