Metal Underground.com

This is a CD/DVD Compilation from Hopeless/Sub City Records. 5% of the suggested retail price will be donated to the Hot Topic Foundation to support programs and organizations which encourage and educate young people in music, creative writing, painting, photography, and filmmaking.

My youngest son, who screams for a local grindcore band watched much of this DVD with me. I've been taking him and his older brother to hardcore shows for as long as I can remember. His friends are amused that his dad likes hardcore music and I am often driving a car full of them to many of the shows I attend. I once asked him if he was embarrassed to go to shows with me. He said he was cool with it as long as I stayed out of the pit, which is fine with me since I'm too old and slow to get in there and try to throwdown. But back in my younger days...

Here's our rundown of the videos:
The concert footage for Chiodos' video was shot well, but pretty generic looking, and the song was boring.
Silverstein trots out the "moody girlfriend bums out the singer" cliché and the song is lame. Boys Night Out dresses up in skeleton costumes and harasses the hippie-looking singer. I remembered this more than the song itself. Alesana's black shirts and red ties neatly matched their black eyeliner. It looked like they had come from an audition for The Cure. Unfortunately, this would not be the last time we saw a band lip syncing and pretending to play their instruments in a lake.

Escape The Fate must have seen Van Halen's “Hot For Teacher” one time too many. They almost redeem themselves with some gratuitous T&A but I think Alesana wants their eyeliner back. Every Time I Die does a silly take on "An American Werewolf in London" in Buffalo, NY. They don't seem to take themselves seriously and the song itself, "We're Wolf," while not particularly memorable, is well done. The Chariot provides a hackneyed video of the band throwing themselves around the set, trashing their instruments while one of their faux noisecore tracks plays on and on and on...

While their song, "Nothing Left," is OK, As I Lay Dying gives in to cliche with the "1984" theme in the video. We've seen this set before with multiple television monitors. Once upon a time these guys played some decent hardcore-laced metal. What happened? Some old guy plays a quiet piano intro until The Human Abstract kicks into some progged-up metalcore in what looked like a circus tent. I had no idea what the video was about. There was some guy wandering around a lake looking confused. Probably wondering why the band wasn't in the lake. August Burns Red shows a lack of imagination by having the band playing on a dirt road in the middle of an open field. It's a standard metalcore song but these guys do it as well as anyone.

I've always liked Converge and their song, "No Heroes" is good. The video however has the same desolate skyline we've seen in a dozen other videos. My son has been after me to give Job For A Cowboy a second listen for some time now, but I had always dismissed them as run of the mill deathcore until I heard their latest release, "Genesis." I don't have the faintest idea what the video is supposed to be about, but the song is heavy with some great drumming and strong vocals. They've turned into a fairly credible death metal unit. Maylene And The Sons of Disaster find themselves in the lake as the band is chased around by some sinister, redneck types, at least when the band is not in the lake lip syncing the song.

A headless guy wanders city streets while Horse The Band pumps out one of their “nintendocore” tracks. It's pretty forgettable. "In The Belly Of A Shark" is solid, English, hardcore punk shot on a non descript sound stage. Gallows are worth a closer look and listen. Just when you thought it was safe to turn on the DVD player again, the forest and black eyeliner are back with Aiden. Actually it's a cemetery, not a forest and there's some guy driving around with a ventriloquist's dummy. “We Sleep Forever”? I don't think I'll be able to sleep for some time after seeing this one. Kaddisfly looks lost out in an open field playing some sappy alt-rock.

Likewise, the CD was pretty unimpressive. Most of the bands fall onto the post-hardcore or metalcore side of the street, or what my sons call "mallcore." There's a lot of music on the CD and it would make a nice compilation for someone who likes a more commercial metalcore.The standout tracks were from Job For A Cowboy, Gallows, and Converge. These might appeal to the average metal fan. August Burns Red wear their hardcore and metal influences well as do Chiodos, but their tracks were uninspired. All in all, this is a fairly disappointing compilation which I don't think would be of interest to the average head-banger.