It’s quite nerve-wracking reviewing an album from a band you genuinely love, especially when that band is Bristol’s (and perhaps this entire country’s?) finest purveyors of hardcore, the simply breathtaking Five Knuckle. It’s been a hell of a wait since their debut album on Household Name ‘Lost For Words, Far From Speechless’ gave the UK scene a half-brick to the back of the head with its ear-piercingly harsh riffs and vocalist Dan Sanfey’s recognisably throaty yelp, and ‘Balance’ marks a definite shift away from their ska tendencies, with only the merest hint of upstroke to be found anywhere.
The most striking aspect of ‘Balance’ is that it sounds like the best-recorded live album ever, since it’s brimming with fiery energy and bile-laden anger that deservedly elevates 5K above the pack. ‘Not In My Name’ is that rarest of beasts, an anti-war song that avoids cliché and trite conjecture while being thrillingly heavy and signalling a more riff-based approach than before. Throughout the entire album Saul Minshall and Edd Thompson’s guitars weave around each other excellently, from the atonal screeching of the aforementioned track to the sheer stomp of ‘Lost In Thought’, and it’s always pleasing to hear some genuinely original fretwork that is impressively mirrored by Jojo Taplin’s frenetic basslines.
While it’s a dismissively lazy claim to make that 5K’s music all sounds the same, it’s also vastly untrue. Shifting from a bowel-loosening riff on ‘The Rise And Fall (?) Of Corporate Rule’ to a surprisingly catchy singalong chorus on ‘Slank’, it’s clear to even the most casual of observers that 5K are a band unsatisfied with churning out identikit anthem after identikit anthem. It also sounds as if the band is expert at working in conjunction with each other (and after so long on the road, who is surprised?), since each member take the fore at different times. Take Shaun Peters’ breathless drum intro to the live anthem ‘Circles’ which flows seamlessly into yet another crunch-laden riff, or the constant shouted backing vocals that give ‘Balance’ a depth of sound that, again, hearkens back to the honed 5K live set.
‘Balance’ is the sound of a band firmly in control of what they want to sound like, and boy, do they want to sound heavy. Theirs is a quintessentially unique hardcore sound that resolutely opposes any of the current diluted American influence and instead blasts along from beginning to end with a series of bludgeoning anthems. In years to come people may well hail this album as a template of how to produce a stunningly contemporary yet viscerally violent collection of songs from one of the most powerful bands this country has seen in years. Five Knuckle are a natural treasure and should be revered.
Ben
www.householdnamerecords.co.uk
