Review
The Guilt Show
Before They Know We're All Dead

Refoundation (2009) Jason

The Guilt Show – Before They Know We're All Dead cover artwork
The Guilt Show – Before They Know We're All Dead — Refoundation, 2009

Now this is more like it. After the slow burn of the opening track "Raise My Flag," The Guilt Show go for the throat with a violent thrashing attack of blitzkrieg type hardcore that reminds me of a cross between The Suicide File and Striking Distance. How awesome is that? Well yeah, it is awesome.

The Guilt Show, like their label mates Run With the Hunted, are another hardcore band on the political tip. But unlike Run With the Hunted, The Guilt Show doesn't try to bog you down with political vagueness. Instead they just goes for a quick swift kick in the nuts, lyrically. Then The Guilt Show offers up explanations to their lyrics in case you weren't quite clear on just what the point was.

Before They Know We're All Dead hits you like sledgehammer to the forehead and never relents. Before They Know We're All Dead is chock full of speedy beats, chunky guitars, the all-important decent mosh parts, and vocals that are on the high end of the register but never annoying. Some tracks on Before They Know We're All Dead do take a more The Hope Conspiracy feel to them but without feeling like a complete rip off. The Guilt Show just knows how to write a good heavy, noisy, hardcore song by trimming off the fat and going straight of the jugular with every chord struck.

Before They Know We're Dead is a great hardcore album and hopefully will get heard by a decent amount of ears even though The Guilt Show is an American band on an Italian label. I hope to hear more from this band in the future. Before They Know We're Dead is my unexpected surprised of 2009.

8.8 / 10Jason • December 1, 2009

The Guilt Show – Before They Know We're All Dead cover artwork
The Guilt Show – Before They Know We're All Dead — Refoundation, 2009

Recently-posted album reviews

Personality Cult

Dilated
Dirtnap (2025)

I had a hard time starting this review. I can’t help coming back to the fact that it sounds like Marked Men. It does, maybe intentionally so, as Dilated is the second of Personality Cult’s albums that is produced by Jeff Burke of Marked Men and Radioactivity. But I don’t necessarily like to say a band sounds like another band … Read more

Various Artists

Her Head's On Fire/Arms Like Roses - Split
Double Helix (2025)

Her Head’s On Fire (NY, NY) and Arms Like Roses (New Haven, CT) team up on this split 7” with two new tracks (one each band) of post-hardcore tunes that are both massive and melodic in their own distinct ways. "Universal" is the track from Her Head’s On Fire. Recorded by the band’s guitarist Jeff Dean, "Universal" came from the … Read more

Dead Bars

All Dead Bars Go To Heaven
Iodine (2025)

Dead Bars has a unique talent of taking the everyday, the experiences you see and live all the time, and shining a new light on them to make them personal and interesting. I've written about it before, yet it's my job to say this again and to make it interesting. It's what Dead Bars does, so it only seems fitting … Read more