SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: COMEBACK KID – HEAVY STEPS

COMEBACK KID
HEAVY STEPS
NEW DAMAGE RECORDS/NUCLEAR BLAST

Hardcore leviathans Comeback Kid have been in the genre game for 20 years. With years comes experience and knowing how to work the genre field to your favour. Comeback Kid has never played it safe when it comes to their records. Their extensive successful catalogue has proven that tenfold. Heavy Steps comes five years after their aggressive melodic gem Outsider. An album that peeled back a side of the dark underbelly of emotion and anger, such an album would open up the gates for the record that would follow after.

From the beginning, the hardcore heavyweights spare no expense in giving us the real deal when it comes to giving us the ultimate experience when it comes to traditional hardcore. Opening with “Heavy Steps”, we are welcomed as you would welcome an old friend you had not seen in years. Everything about this screams Comeback Kid. Massive, lyrically contagious, and impactful, it’s everything we would expect from the Winnipeg natives.

While that was not enough whiplash for you, the next few experiences are just as intense. With towering guitar riffs, powerful breakdowns, and inventive lyricism, Comeback Kid showcases a feeling of emotional suffocation within our skin within the problems we face.

Other hits that take center stage are “Crossed,” featuring Joe Duplantier of Gojira. Destructive and beautifully high-octane in its energy from start to finish, it’s no question that this will be one of the most enjoyable moments on the album thus far.

“Everything Relates” takes a more sentimental turn. Dedicated to CBK’s lead vocalist Andrew Neufeld and guest appearance drummer JJ Peters’ (Deez Nuts, I Killed The Prom Queen) friend that passed away during the making of this record, drummer JJ’s inclusion here holds a deeper meaning and makes us feel more connected to the track. While the album up to this point has been heavy, introspective, and emotionally driven, “Everything Relates” brings out a different kind of moving side we have not seen up to this point.

Thrashers like “Dead On the Fence” and “True To Form” bring the intensity back up again and show us why Comeback Kids are the kings of hardcore. Tracks like this are an example of a unique sound curated for 20 years and innovated with vitriolic passion, straightforward lyricism, and individualized style.

The album ends confidently and lets us breathe with “Standstill” and “Menacing Weight.” While the energy is still very high, it lyrically forebodes the raw and dark emotions that are still lurking even when you have gotten them off your chest. Comeback Kids have not just written an album that instrumentally and lyrically speaks volumes to the industry, but one that many in this time frame can personally identify with.

Heavy Steps takes us on a hard-fought emotional and mentally exhausting journey of life, its fears, and the uneasiness that comes with all of that. In many ways, it becomes an emotional backstage tale of struggle one faces today, approaching situations on eggshells, afraid of what might happen if we were to fall right through the cracks. It is everything that has come to make this band successful and more, and if this is the new sound Comeback Kids has on the horizon, the future of the hardcore scene has never looked brighter.

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