The Dutch quintet pack one hell of a punch on their debut album!
It’s only recently that I came to realise just how rich the Benelux region is in metallic hardcore. Be it the recent return of veterans such as Born From Pain and Ancestral Sin, to younger bands such as Mindwar (the Belgians’ debut ‘Still At War’ is a belter), and now this first offering from West Netherlands quintet Rival Pack.
Packing ten tracks into just under half an hour, it has to be said that there are few surprises in store here for fans of the likes of Agnostic Front, Hatebreed and Terror. However, if you’re going to tread a well-worn musical path, you might as well do a great job of it, and Rival Pack do exactly that; the lack of originality really doesn’t matter much when their songwriting skills are this sharp. Care for a feast of thrashy riffing, powerhouse drumming and gang vocals? Step this way – these guys have plenty of all three, and they mix them to devastating effect.
There’s no doubting their sincerity, either. In the words of the band themselves: “It’s about not running from your pain, but facing it head-on. Only then can you discover your true strength — the strength to be yourself.” Certainly, the members of Rival Pack have faced plenty of adversity over the years, and they’ve channelled all that struggle to great ends in songs like ‘Killer In The Pool’ (which boasts an absolute beast of a breakdown) and ‘Free From Pain’.
The ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ approach means that, occasionally, the tracks kind of blend into one another. For the most part, though, ‘Burn’ is refreshing in its often brutal honesty and total lack of pretension. The aforementioned hardcore veterans can’t go on forever, but as long as there are newer bands to carry the torch as well as Rival Pack do here, they can rest easy.
Main Photo Credit: MEGAN KEIZER
- Facing Fire
- Closing In
- Too Strong
- Killer In The Pool
- Burn
- Free From Pain
- Untold
- Don’t Waste My Time
- Death And The City
- No One Else
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I spend my days teaching English to foreign students, and my evenings attending as many gigs as possible. Raised mainly on a diet of 90s third-wave punk, my tastes have grown to include just about anything from trad ska to thrash metal. The Ramones are my musical gods.
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