with
Bury Your Dead - Cover
Your Tracks
by
Travis Becker
Add one part, guys who showed up late to
a Sopranos casting call, one part legit hardcore label, and mix generously
with serious, New York-style Hardcore. Let it stew all day, and what
do you get? Gravy. Also you get, Bury Your Dead and their album,
Cover
Your Tracks. Just like good stew, everyone has a variation on
the tried and true recipe. With a recipe that’s been done as many
times as hardcore punk, there definitely has to be a secret ingredient
that keeps hungry listeners coming back for seconds and thirds. Bury
Your Dead may have found that secret ingredient, now if Duke will only
tell us what it is.
Right off the bat, and it feels like a
bat between the eyes. BYD grab the listener by the throat and serve notice
that there is a new sheriff in Hardcoreville and he’s running the show
without any delicate vocal interludes or nuanced jazz drumming. Cover
Your Tracks, by contrast, is all Cookie Monster and blast beats.
Songs like “The Color of Money” and “Legend” are powerful statements of
purpose and while they don’t always handle their largely brutish themes
with any subtlety, they more than make up for it with sheer conviction.
There is more than a little metal tossed into this record for good measure.
For the record, your eyes do not deceive you; all of the song titles on
BYD’s record are the names of Tom Cruise movies. They left out Days
of Thunder, though, which if they were following a theme, could have
been an apt title for the record as a whole. The record has a power
and a sense of confidence that leaves little room for introspection.
The detailed production is what really
places this album a rung or two higher on the Hardcore ladder, which is
littered with the bodies of dozens of other bands that strive for a similar
sound. The song writing is nothing new, although, the songs are arranged
so as not to become bland or formulaic as many albums in this genre have
a tendency to do. The playing is tight, but it has to be to even
get in the door at Victory Records. The way the album is recorded
is the clincher. From the opening salvo of “Top Gun” there is a layered,
almost cascading, effect to the vocals that make the listener feel as if
a gang of thugs is assaulting them from all sides.
The feeling may have been heightened by
a quick glance at the photography inside the CD. The drums are rather
low in the mix at times and the guitar overwhelms the other instruments
occasionally, but that’s hardcore. Notes and little bits of feedback
and distortion are buried here and there making Cover Your Tracks well
worth repeated listens.
Running in the front of as rabid a pack
as Hardcore has become is no small feat, but Bury Your Dead course just
fine. They have made a very aggressive, unrelenting album that may
send the uninitiated running for the Goody’s headache powder. But
for fans of Pantera, Helmet, or Sick of It All, this is the band that has
picked up the torch, whatever is left of it. They blend elements
of all of those bands inside their own unique production mixing bowl.
BYD is going to have a lot of dead to bury by the looks of those above-mentioned
corpses on the Hardcore ladder, unless they’re as mean as they look.
If that’s the case, watch out for that stew.
CD Info and Links
Bury Your Dead - Cover Your Tracks
Label: Victory
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