“Tearing away the fabric of what I know has blinded me.”
Death metal-laden hardcore provides what many would expect. It’s the perfectly confluent blend of drop tuned riffs combined with crushing drums that reverberate breakneck hooks and fills on top of menacingly harsh vocals. Yet for any group looking to cogently separate themselves from the pack, such a sound boils down to raw execution. Relative newcomer five-piece No Cure take that sentiment and run with it at warp speed. The Alabama-based outfit has maintained a tightly committed pace since their inception in 2021. Three EP’s and several singles of scorching hardcore composition later, enter I Hope I Die Here. As technically well-executed on all instrumental cylinders as it is progressively lyricized, I Hope I Die Here manifests No Cure’s pinnacle of their approach to a rising sub-genre of hardcore in a twenty-minute beatdown that will have listeners feel as though they’ve been dragged through a straight-edge woodchipper.
This razor blade of an EP begins with the aptly named “Hang Me from the Bible Belt” that serves as both the EP’s longest and perhaps most diversely structured track. Featuring Daniel McWhorter of Gideon, “Hang Me from the Bible Belt” is four minutes of hardcore staples from chants to sonically crushing riffs. Fused with Blaythe Steuer’s impeccable range, the opening songwill leave you feeling as if you’re the one with the holy leather noose wrapped around your neck.
I Hope I Die Here wastes no time transitioning to “Don’t Need Your Help”. While “Hang Me from the Bible Belt” offered short yet intermittent breathers, hardly any such reprieve exists in the second track of No Cure’s unabated onslaught. Relentless and persistently technical start to finish, “Don’t Need Your Help” concludes with a pre-breakdown chant followed by the song’s titular lyrics as No Cure appears to remind us of what should have been abundantly clear since the EP began; they require no help at all in continuing their staunch conquest towards hardcore dominance.
“Forced Coagulation”, perhaps ironically named, showcases some of the EP’s strongest musicianship from Jake Murnane, Duncan Newey, Aesop Mongo and Kyle Ray. Contrary to the track’s title, its sound and constitution are anything but forced. Blast beats and death metal-like hooks galore, “Forced Coagulation” exhibit hints of Dying Fetus and Knocked Loose in what is arguably this EP’s strongest exhibit of hardcore sound coupled with clear death metal influence.
Speaking of I Hope I Die Here’s exemplary instrumentals, technicality connoisseurs will find plenty to indulge in with “The Basement Beneath the Fountain”. Low tuned chugs and pinch harmonics aplenty amidst what is in some ways the slow burner track of the EP. Despite this, “The Basement Beneath the Fountain” offers a nuance in pace that serves as further demonstration of No Cure’s honed craft.
Seemingly eager to turn their stride up fifty notches again, we reach “Your Children Will Drown in the Burning River” and “Kill a Frat Guy”. Tastefully utilizing hardcore fundamental elements among what could very well be the two heaviest tracks of I Hope I Die Here, listeners may as well liken the splintering sound of the tandem to being dragged to the depths with cylinder blocks chained to their ankles and having their skulls smashed in with a sledgehammer, respectively. Zealots of uncompromisingly heavy sound will likely find their favorite juncture of I Hope I Die Herein this case.
“The Problem is You (Same Old Shit)” and “Warcry” conclude No Cure’s zenith arrangement. “The Problem is You (Same Old Shit)” feels like a one-minute, high-speed appetizer to listeners being served the textbook definition of a hardcore track in “Warcry”. A minute and eighteen seconds of brooding chugs, breakdowns, and a final “WARCRY” chant could not be a more befitting culmination and end of No Cure’s cold-blooded display on I Hope I Die Here.
Raw, melancholy, fast and viciously technical, I Hope I Die Here is No Cure’s conceptualization of taking over by almost any means necessary to a degree that appears impossible to match. In twenty minutes from front to back, fans of hardcore will find a welcoming plethora of familiar genre rudiments whilst witnessing the breadth of variation heavy death metal influence provides hardcore. Three years is all that was needed for Birmingham’s straight-edge disciples to propel themselves to the forefront of death metal-backed hardcore. If I Hope I Die Here is any indication, No Cure’s ferocious progressivism will be heard loud and clear for a long time to come.
9.5/10
I Hope I Die Here releases on December 6th through Sharptone Records and you can preorder it here.