ALBUM REVIEW: Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense – Belvedere
Canadian punk giants BELVEDERE are back and blending their furious roots with a renewed lyrical style on the band’s sixth album Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense. Having been hailed as punk kings for the best part of almost three decades, it’s safe to say BELVEDERE have been there and done that in their time in the underground skate-punk scene. From marking their trailblazing fast and melodic mix on debut album Because No One Stopped Us, to touring Warped Tour and later taking an indefinite hiatus after releasing four full-length records together.
Now bringing it back up to speed, the band released album The Revenge Of The Filth back in 2016, and now in 2021, the Calgary four-piece have unleashed their latest LP Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense, which features a thirteen-track selection of BELVEDERE‘s relentless riff-driven sound merged with this modern more realistic approach to songwriting on the sixth album.
Lead single Good Grief Retreat gets BELVEDERE‘s album campaign underway, with a staple pop-punk sounding song. Serious BLINK-182‘s Generational Divide-style sounds come through in the track’s opening moments, as an aggressive blend between speedy drums and guitars paired with the tracks own impactful lyrics tackle capitalism, oppression, and the state of America’s economy: “An investment souvenir, a lonely wave of tears/Don’t go easy when they’re down, compound interest till they drown/An economy that doesn’t care, the new Dodd-Frank nightmare/Passing laws with little thanks, mass oppression by the banks.”
Good Grief Retreat is only a small slither of the massive punk sounds on offer throughout Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense, including that on fellow single releases like the warped Elephant March, the frenzied Camera Obscura, and the short pure punk belter Chromatic.
Delving deeper into the album, opener Happily Ever After, Retina, Automate, and closer Peace In Our Time take this-worldly political perspective BELVEDERE has adopted towards this album and amplify them tenfold. Opener Happily Never After pleads urgently with the people on planet earth to enact change now for the collective betterment of the innocent animals “The animals, and you think they’re lesser beings” and the world as a whole “From mother earth, the theft barely makes a sound” that will be left behind for future generations “Don’t disappoint the ones with hopeful eyes.”
Other songs, such as Retina and Automate, have lyrics which focus on the different motions of life and how we deal with them as human beings. Paired with lightning-fast instrumental speeds and vocals that sing with such conviction and burning intensity, these two tracks not only stand up as some of the best picks from the album’s tracklist, but they are reflective of the trying and testing times the world is living in.
Closer Peace In Our Time provides a breather from the politically heavy narrative the album takes, for something a little more looking forward to the future the further the song progresses. Opening with shouts that say “Every wrong decision like a bomb inside my head/Watch you remake mistakes with existential dread” the drums and guitars keep up speed throughout, adding to the skate-punk heroes’ fast, furious, and frenzied punk roots which are still something ever-present in BELVEDERE’s music more than 25 years down the line of the band’s career.
For BELVEDERE, Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense is an album that has allowed the band to touch upon new lyrical topics that previous records have not yet presented as heavily as this one. Whether it be political, economical, or social issues, Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense discusses them with raging fury, something the band’s punk-charged instrumentals can convey equally as well. Even if the album lacks sonic differentiation and innovation at times, as a body of work, BELVEDERE have pulled a substantial effort out of the bag with their sixth LP.
Rating: 7/10
Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense is out now via Lockjaw Records.
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