ALBUM REVIEW: Raíces – Spine
No-one could ever accuse SPINE of wasting your time. Formed in 2011, the Kansas City four-piece have only ever grabbed their listeners by the scruff of the neck, whipping up a mix of old school hardcore and powerviolence across a pretty sizable collection of EPs, full-lengths, splits and other bits. Raíces – translation ‘roots’ – is their third LP and by their standards it comes a fair while after their latest sizable offering, with only the single Himnos Mambises filling the gap between this and their December 2020 EP L.O.V..
As promised, SPINE aren’t messing around at all here, and with 12 tracks squeezed into less than 13 minutes Raíces actually takes the prize of being the band’s shortest full-length – though admittedly no-one could accuse 2014’s Time Has Gone or 2018’s Faith of being bloated. New listeners may be somewhat surprised however to find that this album isn’t just all fast hardcore; obviously it tears along at quite the clip, but you’ll actually find a good few moshier parts here that round out the experience well. Particularly with tracks like Peligro and especially the album’s penultimate offering Pure – which at 2:52 is practically prog rock for SPINE – the band show they can do more than just full-throttle, with these two standing out considerably as a result.
Generally though Raíces really does tear by. It has the kind of momentum one would normally expect of a live show, and the rough and ready production certainly helps it feel that way. Dillon Bendetti’s cymbals bleed all over the mix – not to the point of ruining it, mind – while guitars (Alex Tunks), bass (Max VanTillburg) and even the vocals from Antonio Marquez are all pushed way into the red in a manner that feels like only the slightest tool-up on the bristling ferocity of pioneering records from bands like SIEGE, VOID and even Scum era NAPALM DEATH.
Marquez stands out a lot especially, his vocals delivered in both English and Spanish though not particularly easy to disentangle in either language given the aforementioned levels of distortion through which everything is delivered. It’s not hard to tell that he’s super pissed though, his raging bark making clear enough the intent behind tracks with titles that translate to things like ‘hate’ and ‘empty’. There’s actually also a pretty significant political edge to the record, which the band describe as grappling with the “interplay of heritage and identity, family, and world outlook in the face of oppressive governments.” Again, it would be nice if the listener could pick a bit more of this out without needing a lyric booklet in front of them, but that’s hardly been a problem for plenty of bands before them and it isn’t really a huge one here either.
Ultimately, it is tough to pick individual moments out of Raíces aside from the couple mentioned, and to be honest it all happens so quickly that there isn’t much point. It does leave a strong overall impression though, one of high levels of aggro delivered with a truly impressive sense of momentum. Maybe it isn’t the one for you if you only really go for more polished modern hardcore, but if you can handle things a little rougher round the edges you’ll have a great time here, even if it is over faster than you can say powerviolence.
Rating: 7/10
Raíces is set for release on June 30th via Convulse Records.
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