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
Follow Rival Pack on Their Socials:
Need more Punk In Your Life?
Live review: Twenty Flight Rockers at The 100 Club, London, 30/10/2026
Formed in London in 1983, combining the leather jacket look and defiance of the classic British rocker movement with the intensity of punk, Twenty Flight
Lol Tolhurst plays intimate warm-up show bringing the songs of The Cure to Brighton’s seafront
Wednesday 28th October was Lol Tolhurst – a founding member of The Cure’s – warm-up show before the band’s sold-out performance at Whitby’s legendary Tomorrow’s
EP review: BLDSUGR! – ‘The Fields’
Released just in time for Halloween, ‘The Fields’ finds Birmingham trio BLDSUGR! doing their best to make October considerably less comfortable. The band call their
Transvision Vamp, London Shepherds Bush Empire, 22nd Oct 2026
Of all the reunions to have taken place of late, Transvision Vamp’s was surely among the most unexpected. It’s been a whopping 34 years since
Desperate Measures, London Hope & Anchor, 24th Oct 2026
Happy 45th birthday, Desperate Measures! The London-via-New-Zealand punks may have emerged in more innocent times, but the songs have aged well, and remain – sometimes
Cancer Bats/Ignite, London Dingwalls, 31st Oct 2026
Kudos is seriously due to all three bands performing tonight – not just for playing great sets, but for having covered pretty much the entire
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.
Did you know that we are 100% DIY? We run our own game. No one dictates to us, and no one drives what we can or cannot put on our pages – and this is how we plan to continue!
