KILLING TIME

What the hell? Never expected to see these perennially-overlooked HYHC bruisers back at it, and I certainly would never have hoped for a comeback album this full of vitality, elbow-throwing vigor and upbeat, caffeinated old-school fire. "Three Steps Back" brings a welcome dose of that SICK OF IT ALL-style street hardcore, simple, stripped-down and unpretentious. It's full of hooks, heart and venom, ganged-up backing vocals, lead-pipe breakdowns and short, sharp songs with equal parts tough-guy machismo, world-weary observation, and a reborn sense of go-get-em optimism and motivation.

Vocalist Anthony Communale has aged well, his likable bark coming in somewhere between Lou Koller and Choke from SLAPSHOT. He rides herd over these two-minute anthems with a vibe that's part preacher, part carnival barker, spitting out boasts and manifestoes with obvious glee. The band steps up to the plate with energetic playing and big, lean, simple east coast riffs. There's a lot of musclebound midtempo stuff, alongside faster pit-friendly raveups like the scorching "Flight Plan" to get the blood pumping.

Complaints? Only that the production could be a little crisper, especially the guitars. But hey, I'll take low-buck KILLING TIME over no KILLING TIME at all, and I'll certainly take 25 or 30 minutes of this fired-up old-school fury over a whole subway tunnel full of lapsed straightedge goons and ironic mama's boys with scene beards who think hardcore started with EARTH CRISIS or HATEBREED. Don't take the brevity of this review as a bad sign — there's just not a lot to say about "Three Steps Back" besides the fact that it's a proud and proper New York hardcore record and it kicks all kinds of ass. Support accordingly — who knows, if we all buy this one, maybe someone will go fish the corpse of REST IN PIECES out of the Hudson River...