Rise and Fall - Into Oblivion CD Review

So you’re casually strolling through the mall, window shopping and people watching, without a care in the world. You just got done with work and you’re free for the rest of the night. As you’re lazily walking along on your way to Cinnabon for a yummy snack, a group of three teenage girls starts walking alongside you.

“Oh. My. God. Did you, like, see how hot Timmy looked in gym class with his new Hawthorne Heights studded wife beater? I was so totally going to ask him out right then and there but, like, Tanya was all asking me about my new RAZR and I didn’t want to blow her off because, you know, she started those rumors about me and Jackson last time that I kinda sorta didn’t talk to her when she was all PMS-ing. It’s like, totally, so much of a pain being her, like, only hot friend. Y’know?”

Every last fiber in your body has suddenly been strained as you’ve gone from being utterly relaxed to holding back a homicidal rampage that this world has never seen. In your mind you are trying to focus on just making it to Cinnabon, but instead all you can do is imagine yourself brandishing a sledgehammer, turning on the group of girls, and pounding the living, bloody bejesus out of them. Viciously, bloodily, and so satisfactorily you pound and pound and pound and pound, watching joyously as you rid the world three ungodly annoyances.

Now during this scene there has to be a soundtrack. Vicious killing like this can’t just happen without some type of accompaniment. Rise and Fall’s latest effort, Into Oblivion, would be that soundtrack, mainly because it’s the type of hardcore that makes you want to beat up your own mom—every chord a distorted, heavy blow to your ears, vocals that don’t even entertain the thought of melody, and a rhythm section that never slows down. This is simply downright, blunt trauma inducing hardcore (except for the last track, which is slower, almost blunt, trauma inducing hardcore… but you won’t notice by that time as your ears will already no doubt be bleeding).

It’s not often that hardcore is done right. Actually, it’s not that often that hardcore is even really done competently, but Rise and Fall have achieved what so few bands in this genre do—the creation of a cd that bears repeat listens and also doesn’t sound exactly like every other hardcore cd to come out in the last 10 years.