If there’s one lesson that hardcore teaches us, it’s that we should always be ourselves. Unfortunately that message often gets lost along the way, and more often than not you find bands that are quick to apply the hardcore tag to their sound and be exactly like everything else that is currently trending. That cannot be said about Arizona’s The Beautiful Ones. While they are billed as hardcore band, they carry so much more depth than many of today’s bands, and their debut album ‘Jaded Love’ is an astounding listen.
Before you have even pressed play, ‘Jaded Love’ fills you with intrigue as you read the track titles. There are references to love, in amongst floral metaphor, and if that wasn’t enough it is common knowledge that the band is named after a Prince song. With all these factors taken into account, it seems impossible that The Beautiful Ones could be a hardcore band of any sort.
Even as the shimmering instrumental intro of ‘Jaded’ begins to build through walls of reverb it still doesn’t have any air of hardcore and punk about it. Until the end when a soft voice tells you “This, Is Jaded Love” and the band come crashing into ‘Preface (Take It All Away)’. It has a real NYHC hardcore vibe as front man Tevita Maliu’s gravel-like tone rips over frantic guitar riffs. However out of the blue things take another turn as it lift’s into a soaring vocal melody that is almost spine chilling in its delivery.
They do keep things a little more straight forward on ‘Exhale (Room 312)’ which pays homage to Life Of Agony and Only Living Witness, with it’s alt-rock meets punk riffs. Although out of nowhere, the instantly recognisable vocal of Britty Drake from Pity Sex takes the lead on dream pop influenced ‘The Morning’ which gives a reprieve from the darker nature of ‘Jaded Love’. This is brief though, as the storming ‘Flowercrown’ careens into a flurry of breakdowns.
The narrative of heartbreak runs deep through ‘Jaded Love’, and while at times things may seem a little too close to the bone lyrically, Tevita Maliu wears his heart firmly on his sleeve. As he bellows “Love Is Conditional” from the pit of his stomach on the monolithic ‘Bloom & Destroy’, it is clear he doesn’t want to dress things up in any fancy word play, and wants the listener to feel every inch of pain that he has suffered.
Britty Drake makes her second appearance on the album through the glorious ‘Stay’, in which her fragile vocal compliments Maliu’s tone by adding a light to his shade. The band launch into full on hardcore punk mode for the last time on ‘Heart In a Jar’, before closing the album on the slow-burning ‘Nothing. Existing. Missing’ which unfolds through a combination of swooning harmonies into cavernous, bottom-end riffs at it’s cadence.
The Beautiful Ones have yielded stunning results with their debut album, and undoubtedly ‘Jaded Love’ will divide opinion among the hardcore faithful. Purist’s will probably have written them off before even listening too it, but the external elements they have incorporated are what set them apart from their contemporary’s. It may be the most bizarre hardcore record you hear this year, but ‘Jaded Love’ will also be one of the most captivating.
GLEN BUSHELL