The Banner is the last great hope for Ferret Music since Dead Hearts broke up recently. I mean would you look at Ferret's current roster. They have two of the worst bands ever created in The Hotness and Foxy Shazam. Madball and Poison the Well haven't put on decent albums in nearly a decade. That leaves us with Misery Signals with their constant suckfest. Oh there's Every Time I Die, who are now like watching The Simpsons as everything is an ironic send-up of their selves. The other bands either fall in the categories of "never was" or "never been".
This used to be the label that released the first two Endeavor releases. Ferret released the first Bronx album. Hell, they even released most of Disembodied's discography as well as their offspring band, Martyr A.D. Speaking of Martyr, Frailty sounds a like On Earth as it is in Hell. You see, back in the early part of this century it seemed that every single metalcore band was beginning to forget the "core" part of their genre. They all started playing slower, ripping of Cradle of Filth, and wearing ironic factory faded Iron Maiden shirts. Not Martyr A.D. though, they went straight for the throat with a pulverizing attack of chunky meaty chum-filled blast of metallic hardcore with the entire requisite mosh parts to clear any dance floor. The Banner is in the same vein, Satan bless their evil little hearts. Although, The Banner relies more on thick as mud sludge metal that makes a listener feel like they are being pulled through a river of a congealed blood on the river Styx. Thankfully, it's not all gloom and doom as The Banner whips it up at times with some ferocious blast of speed. It's like trying to dodge cleavers in a tornado from the bowels of Mephistopheles himself.
Oh yeah, there's some mosh. If you see The Banner and there's a chubster with a flat brim hat and a pair of basketball shorts he's probably going to want try and take your head off with a fury of spin kicks that are induced from the bevy of double-kicked fused breakdowns. I usually find mosh parts like this unnecessary but they tend to work for The Banner, and quite frankly when your album cover is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I expect nothing less.
My only complaint is the lack of a lyric sheet - which can be found on their Myspace blog - and the fact the overall sludginess tends to hamper a few songs from being the bestial onslaught they could be. However, The Banner is a good band. Actually they are a great band is you think of the sea of shit they are connected with. Seriously, Gwen Stacy? Band couldn't honor one the greatest deaths in comic history right. Anyhow, if you like heavy metalcore that doesn't make you feel like a douchebag that hangs out at Hot Topic a bit too much, then you can't go wrong with the evil assault that is New Jersey's The Banner.
