ALBUM REVIEW: Faith In Vain – Rough Justice
MLVLTD seemingly just can’t help but sign great quality metallic hardcore; the first release from them this year is ROUGH JUSTICE’s long-awaited debut album Faith In Vain and it very much delivers on expectations. Though the band have been around a few years, this marks something of a rebirth for them, it being their debut album and with renewed focus on the band – they’re due to tour this year with MALEVOLENCE and PAIN OF TRUTH, with guitarist Josh Baines pulling double duty with the former.
Opener Coward immediately sets out the stall for what to expect from Faith In Vain: crunchy, metallic riffs, battering ram drum work and ferocious barks that are two-step pit fodder as much as they are groove-laden mosh parts. Overruled is just as aggressive, vocalist Jimmy barking the band name in classic hardcore fashion before the main riff piledrives you through the stage. “Treated as an equal / That’s all I want to be” he barks before a beatdown passage that gives way to a thrashing groove. So far, so metallic hardcore that MLVLTD know so well. But ROUGH JUSTICE do have a couple of tricks up their sleeve.
The first curveball is just round the corner, with the title track beginning with a chest-beating cry and chunky riffing. Then they throw a CREED chorus into the mix and all bets are off; it’s a shame they don’t do this anywhere else on the record, because even once you get past them doing something so unexpected, it just works, taking the song higher. Despite being the longest song on the record by a solid margin given most others barely hit two and a half minutes – never mind three – it’s a stellar example of where the band could go and what other tricks they’ve got up their sleeve.
The remainder of Faith In Vain is very much like the first two songs laid out, with the exception of two-minute interlude Rusting that could arguably do with being a minute shorter. When It Comes brings stomping drums and barrel-chested riffs, flirting again with crossover thrash in speedier moments, while Boa Constrictor doesn’t so much crush as go straight for the jugular. ROUGH JUSTICE do clearly share a little DNA with Baines’ other band in the guitar sound and some of their riff structures, but with a sound far more indebted to metallic hardcore, particularly vocally, they’re still their own animal.
Faith In Vain explores topics from the usual hardcore fare to guilt, fear, hidden intentions and religion, all done on the blueprint they spent hours honing in the Sheffield DIY space MALEVOLENCE created in the first place. Those hours pay off, with songs honed to the keen edge presented on the album. In just 24 minutes, ROUGH JUSTICE offer a bruising lesson in Sheffield’s own strain of metallic hardcore, one that looks to the genre’s past as much as its future, the band clearly straining to break the mould without abandoning the more simple heavy hardcore that birthed them.
Rating: 8/10
Faith In Vain is set for release on January 12th via MLVLTD.
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