The Hope Conspiracy: Endnote

Although citing the Smiths as an influential touchstone attempts to veer this steam rolling quartet onto a different path, Endnote is undeniably the sound of metal clashing with its pissed off musical cousins of hardcore and punk. But instead of incorporating polyrhythmic breakdowns and algebraic tempo shifts like their metalcore peers in Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan, the Hope Conspiracy just want to rock — and rock hard and heavy they do.

Chugging and snarling through the one-minute opener, “Departed”, the Hope Conspiracy enter like a bruising heavyweight fighter — swinging their dual guitars like fists of fury; sweat flying in every direction, muscles churning and pummeling. It may be a succinct and brutal capsule for the forthcoming onslaught — but it’s merely the pin being pulled from the grenade.

While the punk-afflicted snare blasts, heavy-handed guitar chords and gut wrenching bellows get the bodies slamming and adrenaline pumping, the oncoming train of Endnote‘s material drills the exact same thing in to your skull. Needless to say, it’s not versatility or expanse that the Hope Conspiracy thrives upon; it’s the grease-stained, blue-collar hardcore edge that Endnote piledrives home. The sound may only rotate a few miniscule angles from its grimy hardcore focal point, but this heavy music car crash makes guitars bleed and throats grind where ingenuity and reinvention lack.

Finding commonality in classics (Black Flag) and contemporaries (American Nightmare) alike, Endnote is an urgent, blood boiling affair that harkens back to the hardcore heyday of the ’80s with its foot on the punk accelerator all while getting its ass kicked by the terror that metal once was. It’s fitting, then, when the Hope Conspiracy attempt to compact a half hour of sonic demolition into a dozen tracks that scream, scratch and scathe your stereo with a flexed hardcore muscle and a bent for chaos.

While the heavy music forum has been recently overrun with spineless imitators and radio-suckling leeches, this thick-necked, bone-breaking sophomore effort is refreshing in its intense, urgent energy that thrashes and trashes without any need for commercial sugarcoating or cerebral exploration. Endnote may be slim on creativity, but the Hope Conspiracy carve this slab of concrete out of the mountain of rock where grime and sheer force destroy all other sonic capabilities to leave only the mutilated plastic of this CD intact. This thump to your skull actually makes cauterizing your veins and shredding your nerves actually feel, well, good.