The wave of hardcore bands coming from the hotbed that is the Bay Area is endless; Murder Practice is the latest export from the constantly thriving scene to hit your stereo. Their self-titled debut is a ten-song soundtrack of aggressive hardcore mixed with the fury of punk and the ferociousness of metal. And while a lot of bands claim to be "hardcore-punk mixed with metal," Murder Practice is the real deal.
Murder Practice kicks off with "Altered Beast," which I might add was one of very few kickass games for the Sega console. The title is fitting to the song as the band serves a punishing delivery of metallic hardcore, not unlike the fury I unleashed on the undead when I transformed from a normal centurion into a powerful beast. The riffs are extremely thick, even with one guitarist, and Mike Maramag pounds his kit with such intensity.
As the album continues on, the stellar song titles don't end. Up next is "Sonny Chiba" - a man who was in pretty much every martial arts movie ever made. The band provides another solid soundtrack of breakdown heavy hardcore akin to Domination-era Sworn Vengeance and Punishment as tag-team vocalists Jacob Wallace and Joe Hale verbally chastise you. Reading the lyrics, you feel bad for whomever the song is about.
"Go Eat Worms" - yes, it's a Goosebumps reference - sees the band lean in the high-octane punk direction. The breakdowns are gone, now its just fast-as-hell riffs and super-drum fills - try and keep up. "What I Make of It" blends the previous track with how things started off -it's a nice equal mixture of fast parts and breakdowns, not to mention sing-alongs. When the band fuses its influences together, they're unstoppable.
The album does have its weaker moments. "Backdoor Stardom" has quite down-tuned nu-metal vibe to it at times. Granted, its not hugely obvious, but I heard the Korn riffs sneaking through occasionally here and there on the album. "Retrogression" and "From the Start" are decent songs, but compared to the rest of the album they're rather short and feel undeveloped.
In the lyrical department, Murder Practice seems to concentrate on the negative aspects of life and the dismal world that we are live in. But they do occasionally opt for a more positive outlook on "Survival at Sea," as demonstrated in this lyric:
Let's not focus so much on the communal strife / It darkens ourselves when we fight, fight, fight / We can't get buried in our own mistakes / They'll pile up on us and make our backs break / Let's make a turning point / Let's take a different way.
There are also the political oriented songs, none more so than "Order 66," which really gets you to evaluate the U.S.'s position in world politics. When a band can inspire you to have a conversation after reading their lyrics, you know they're writing something meaningful.
All in all, Murder Practice is still a young band, so they're not expected to be masters just yet. They have laid a solid groundwork with their debut, and with some refining of their songwriting; they could churn out a rather impressive sophomore effort. Add in some substantial touring and I could easily see them landing a spot at Thorp, Spook City, or Stillborn.
