Album ReviewsHardcorePunkReviews

ALBUM REVIEW: Famine – Paint It Black

It’s been a long time since we have had new music from Philadelphia’s own PAINT IT BLACK. The band haven’t released any new music since their triumphant EP Invisible over a decade ago and have since been laying relatively low, but now in 2023 the boys have joined forces with the legendary Revelation Records and have set about making a statement immediately with their new album entitled Famine.

The album opens with the title track and from the very outset you can tell that the boys have something to say. Vocalist Dan Yemin spits his lyrics with the kind of grit and bile that he always has. The song has a swagger about it, and the rumbling bass of Andy Nelson and the hard hitting, booming drum sound of Jared Shavelson puffs out the chest perfectly for Josh Agran to lay his gritty guitar lines over. This is a punk song in every sense of the word and it’s a great way to come out of the gates.

The boys then turn the speed up with Dominion. This song once again throws back to the old school New York style of hardcore and sounds like an instant crowd surfing and stage diving classic. The energy is infectious and perfectly displays that the band aren’t resting on their laurels. This is one of those albums that people are going to use to pump themselves up with. Even with songs such as Safe the band ramp up the intensity; the emotive vocals from Yemin tap into that primal feeling that every punk fan escapes to and the fact that one of the more mellow songs on the album can still get the listener’s back up is a testament to the songwriting.

Serf City, U.S.A. is another high intensity song. It’s 34 seconds of madness that shows just how much musical ground can be covered in a short amount of time in this genre, proving that sometimes less is more. The Unreasonable Silence is an entirely different entity to everything else on the album. The dissonant guitar lines from Agran and the pained delivery from Yemin gives off a vibe that you could find on a CONVERGE record, which can only ever be a good thing.

Towards the back end of the album the track Namesake clocks in as the second longest. The song once again covers plenty of musical ground and shifts tempos seamlessly. The band use a runtime of a little over two and a half minutes to throw in a solid build-up, break-neck hardcore section and then another half-time section to close things out. The structure of the song is anything but normal, but that is the beauty of a band such as PAINT IT BLACK: they write the way they want to and are not afraid to mix things up to keep things feeling fresh.

This album is exactly what the doctor ordered. It’s got attitude by the bucket load. It is short, but not so short that it is over before you can get a chance to enjoy it. Rather, it gives you a taste of what the boys are still capable of and then ducks out whilst the going is good and leaves you wanting more. The fact that nothing feels stale or overused or dull is a sign that the lads are in tune with each other as songwriters and are back at the perfect time to inject some much-needed energy and cool heads to the punk scene in 2023. This album may be called Famine, but it is a feast for the ears.

Rating: 8/10

Famine - Paint It Black

Famine is set for release on November 3rd via Revelation Records.

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