When their last album,
A Place Called Home, landed in 2000, I was fourteen. I hadn’t heard of Ignite. 6 years on, and having since listened, I was more than looking forward to
Our Darkest Days ending an extended recording drought. You could say it was worth the wait.
Sitting towards the more melodic end of melodic hardcore, ODD sits nicely next to Bigwig’s recent offering of
Reclamation in terms of style (and, perhaps, to a lesser extent, the poppier side of Boysetsfire’s spectrum), with the traditionally high-pitched and pop-styled vocals of Zoli Teglas. Production qualities are noticeably stepped up from their last record, but they’re nowhere near overproduced or too “clean” in sound; guitars retain a gritty resonance, yet don’t completely drown the frequently soaring vocals which really do set the Ignite sound apart from the rest of the melodic hardcore scene. “Fear is our tradition” is a great example of this with its huge outro vocals of “Find our own way out” wailing away to a gradual fade. Similarly, “Let it burn” has a similar explosively anthemic quality about it, yet it’s present throughout the track.
The intricately constructed harmonies and a general feeling of melody in a genre of melodic hardcore that can be frequently devoid of half its constituent parts build a real sense of a grinding yet finely crafted album. You don’t have to know about their recording absence to get the idea that this has been worked on for some time, and is now virtually bursting at the seams. The only thing that even approached a disappointment for me was the moments of tempo variation were seemingly few and far between: if you’re looking for a breakdown or two in your music, you may be disappointed. But this record just isn’t about that, so that criticism can be considered mild at worst.
Laden with references decrying the evils of modern television, political diatribes and generally angry external face, it still manages to be a wholesomely catchy and inclusive record. A feat worthy of some congratulation given the recent new sunrise on the gruffer punk rock sound; a trend which Ignite are fuelling, without pigeon-holing themselves as bandwagon jumpers. This is a development on the sound you know, but it’s a sufficiently close departure and done to such a high standard that it will be received warmly across various punk sub-genres. Barnstorming.
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