Midnight Madness and Beyond: WILD//TRIBE

Wild Tribe - Endless Nights
2012, Rescued From Life, Punkalive, Under The Surface

Wild Tribe is a six-piece out of Fort Worth, Texas, created out of Unit 21 and Tolar, which were basically combined into one huge-ass  hardcore juggernaut.The preview streams on the bandcamp site of their debut record (collectively released on Rescued From Life Records, Punkalive Records and Under The Surface Records) had me all worked up and itching to get my hands on a copy and now that it's finally here, I can say without a doubt in my mind, that this piece of vinyl is one of the best hardcore albums released so far this year. Combining a metallic sound with aggressive, simplistic d-beat style hardcore is nothing new in any way (Anti-Cimex, Totalitär, GISM etc), and neither is having dual vocalists duelling and doing a call-and -response-type singing, but what these guys do is way way beyond that, even if the basic structure to their style owes alot to Swedish and Japanese hardcore. Alot of the power from their music comes from the fact that they simply fucking rock! And they aren't afraid to let their metal influences shine through, either. They play with an intensity that hooks you from the first few bars of the opening intro and they write really catchy hardcore with lots of memorable vocal parts and riffs. I keep hearing shades of RKL, Broken Bones, Rancid, Christ On A Crutch and World Burns To Death in Wild Tribe's music, as well as tons of Motörhead or Diamondhead-style riffing, often laden with quick guitar licks tossed into the mix whenever possible. The production is close to fucking perfect here, all the elements are given lots of space and everything is clearly audible, which is awesome because it lets us hear those amazing bass runs that would otherwise be lost in the cacaphony. The really cool thing about this  record is that it captures so many of the good things about hardcore that is often lost in other bands/recordings: we get aggression and speed without the muddiness of shitty recordings, we get the complementing dynamics and force of dual vocalists (both of whom have really distinct and personal voices), we get the melody and catchiness of hardcore/punk while never losing any of the intensity and we get alot of truly rocking singalong-parts and the youthful exhilaration and rush of honest, passionate and well-played rebellious music that defiantly extends two middle fingers to the powers that be. Shit does not get any better that this.

Stream parts of the album from the bandcamp site here.