Bleeding Kansas

Dead Under Decor (2006)

Ben Sailer

Technical, noisy, and vehemently anti-fashion, Bleeding Kansas' Dead Under Decor is a sonic call to arms against today's increasingly vapid musical landscape. Don't let the presence of the word "bleeding" fool you, however; this is not the kind of clichéd hipster crap a name like Bleeding Kansas might suggest. These guys sound much more in line with Converge than say, Atreyu, and we can all be thankful for that.

These guys are severely pissed off and disillusioned with the current state of the hardcore/punk scene, and it shows. The title track takes aim at overly fashion-conscious scenesters with lines like, "Let's spend a paycheck on a new life / Dead under your décor / They will want you for you / Not what new style you're wearing / Stop hiding under your clothes." Truer words have hardly been uttered by anyone, in or out of the hardcore community, in a damn long time.

Fans of bands like Coalesce, Breather Resist, or the Minor Times will feel familiar with Bleeding Kansas's brand of angular dissonance. They back it up with a keen sense of dynamics and solid songwriting, two concepts lost on some of their lesser peers. "Retract the Altitude" and "Your Scars Never Heal" open up with heavy, off-time riffs before shifting into more grooving midsections that build back up into thunderous walls of noise. "My Words, My Voice" starts off with some sparse drumming and off-kilter guitars before the band takes their foot off the brake pedal and slams things into gear a little after the one-minute mark.

"Drowning in a Sea of Shit (Preprise)" is by far the most chilled out track here, providing a little bit of a break from the more skull-crushing moments. It doesn't last long before leading into the song's toweringly heavy followup, "Drowning in a Sea of Shit." It's those kinds of changes that keep you on your toes, and keep this album from sounding exactly like every other technical metalcore album already in existence.

In short, Dead Under Decor makes a complete mockery of the girl-pants and mascara-loving fashion zombies who have overrun the underground scene in recent years, and it rocks pretty thoroughly while doing so. If passion means more to you than fashion, consider giving this a shot.