After watching the Eulogy Tour Is Hell DVD earlier this year, I got a pretty good feel for what a band like Black My Heart was all about. Siqqq mosh brah! Yeah, one of those bands. They feature some ex-members of On Broken Wings, so before anything, that should at least give you a little bit of what you should be expecting.

The next half an hour validate those assumptions, with nine songs of the most uninspired, boring mosh metal garbage I've heard in quite some time. Every element of the music is lifted piece by piece from the bro mosh handbook. The laughable "We Weren't Brought Up Right" repeats the chorus of "This is our family!" roughly eighty-six times before one last scream brings the song to a close. One down, eight to go.

Chugga chugga chuggaaaaa breakdown!

Two down. That's essentially all that's to be found through any song on the album: Recycled, repeated dropped D riffing, then what sounds like the exact same breakdown repeated a number of times in every single song, all under the poorly growled vocals about backstabbing and brotherhood. Because we haven't heard any of that before. I'm not sure I can easily convey how bad these lyrics actually are, but trust me that the fact that they're nearly undecipherable without looking at the liner notes is one of the album's only positives. As hard as you listen, you're liable to only hear the slow, churning double bass and the repetitious, chug riffing that dominates every single minute of the album. There's little rhythm to speak of, just a collection of chords that seems thrown together in some random mix match. There's just no way to get into any of the songs; without rhythm, what are you really left with? Just a few musicians that happen to be playing music at the very same time. The only thing worse than the instrumentation here is the lyrics, if you can believe that.

I'm sick and tired of being hungry, I've spent my last fucking breath / Passed out and my nightmare doesn't end, everyone of you gets a bullet to the head / Fuck, it doesn't end, passed out on the floor and my nightmare doesn't end / Where the fuck are my friends? We're going out tonight, we'll bring this city to its knees.

Nice work, Tolstoy. There's nothing here to celebrate, nothing here to like, nothing here to remember. The tough guy posturing of bands like this, bands like On Broken Wings, bands like Shattered Realm, that's what's wrong with hardcore, that what's eating it from the inside out. Want something to celebrate? Wait until this band actually breaks up; I'll raise my glass to that.