Composed of Damian Abraham of Fucked Up, Jordan Posner of Terror and No Warning, and Jesse Labovitz of No Warning, Millenial Reign was a short-lived side project that played Clevecore, or in other words, paid homage to underground legends Integrity. Although Millenial Reign made an appearance on the Fucked Up Weekend DVD, this five-year-old recording is the first official music release by the band.
Bones Dust Nothing opens up with thunderous guitars that pound a note and let the note hang for an eternity. While the band is directly professing their fandom of Integrity, Ringworm and Pale Creation, to the less informed (like myself), the music, with its pounding drums, massive guitars and chugging pace could be described as early Cro-Mags with better production and a few more solos.
While the EP is short, it feels like a fully-formed statement, taking four different takes on a fairly narrow genre where each song feels unique but in line with the others. Plus, to flesh out the sound with some additional vocals, Fucked Up pals George Petit of Alexisonfire and Chris Colohan of Left for Dead (and an original member of Fucked Up) drop by to play off Abraham's feral voice.
While those just casually listening to the band might mistake Abraham's bark for blind screaming, an inspection of the lyrics reveals some pretty darn clever concepts. On "I Start Fires with My Mind," Abrahams seems to distance himself from the Evolution v. Creationism debate with the snappy play on words "So God forbid that our thing is admitting that our hope springs from the uncertainty of the unknown." On "Moore's Law," he muses that with IT rapidly evolving, could we lose our identity in a mass of zeros and ones? "A final evolution / to a homeland where our spirit's reborn / pure information living forever / this is the heaven we prophesied / we are destined for immortality."
While it's likely that this band is now defunct and Bones Dust Nothing is likely the only artifact they'll leave behind, at least we're left with a new appreciation for each of the members' art when removed from their main bands, and one that is deftly able to pay respect to its influence without becoming a pale carbon copy of the original.