WITH HONOR

Known for its positive, upbeat brand of hardcore, WITH HONOR makes its Victory Records debut with "This is our Revenge". The disc follows the band's 2004 "Heart Means Everything" debut on Stillborn. "This is our Revenge" is one instance where the whole is not necessarily greater than the sum of its parts.

There is an upside to the band's modernized and melodic approach to old school hardcore. One can indeed hear the influence of bands like MINOR THREAT in the riffs and fast tempos. In fact, the style of vocalist Todd Mackey is kind of a lighter shade of Ian McKaye. And that is one of the problems. In this writer's opinion, there's not a lot of middle ground in hardcore: it either knocks your teeth out or it doesn't. Just like one cannot be a little pregnant, it's a stretch to say one is a little like Ian. Anything less than the original article gets lost in the shuffle. As harsh as that may seem, it is not an indictment of Mackey. It is simply an acknowledgement that the album has that familiar vanilla taste to it.

Every time I heard tracks like "Elevens", "Small Dreams", or "Like Trumpets", I remember taking note of the hooks, but the memory would soon fade. I'd then switch focus to the fairly furious pace of the tunes and the bits of throwback hardcore, only to repeatedly come to the conclusion that those elements also stopped just short of the finish line. In bringing together the melodic and the ferocious, neither ends up making a convincing enough impact to bring me back for seconds (at least voluntarily). The bitch of it is that there's nothing conspicuously problematic about "This is our Revenge". It just left me nonplussed — that's not what I want out of a hardcore album. Regardless, I'm quite certain that the Happy Hardcore Contingent will devour it.