I've been listening to hardcore for several years and no matter how many times I get a hardcore CD, I have to admit it's a struggle to listen to it. Most of the genre talks about being hostile towards authority or being straight-edge or details the bowels of a deep betrayal, none of these subjects I, personally, either have experienced or felt a deep compassion for. I am middle-class America, had good parents, a good upbringing, no deep betrayals (ex-girlfriends excluded), and I like to drink beer. Further, I considered hardcore as nothing more than a cousin of metal but cross-bred with punk. Blasting drumbeats, metal-ish guitars and shouted vocals being the main traits my ears would pick up as band after band arrived into my mailbox. I kept thinking, is this all the hardcore genre has?

And then No Warning's self-titled release arrived in my mailbox. Like Bigwig's Unmerry Melodies (the release I credit with re-introducing me to punk), No Warning have re-introduced me to what hardcore can be.

And it comes on a release that is not even 17 minutes long.

And it comes on a release on an independent label.

And it is not Earth Crisis. <grin>

No Warning is Ben, Matt, Jordan, Christian, and Jon, and they list their contack address as Toronto, Ontario, Canada. No info about who plays what in the CD booklet, and if you head out to their website, you'll see that Christian and Jon are not listed.

But back to the CD at hand, it's really six songs and three songs that were available on a demo. Of the nine songs present, my absolute favorite, killer, song-with-the-greatest-redeeming-value is "My World." If I was waiting for a hardcore band to hit me in the heart, No Warning stabbed me, man, with the words, "You wanna know how I know this hate is for real/ Because it's all I feel." Wow. The earlier lyrics in the song include the equally powerful lines, "This is my world so get the fuck out and try this shit with someone else/ You don't know what I'm thinking."

Musically, at only a run time of 2:14, there's not a lot of time to make an impression. A mere 40 seconds into the song, the band changes the mood of the song and launches into a raunchy guitar riff that shamelessly chugs along like a good Pantera or Crowbar or Pro-Pain riff. But damn if it didn't make a hardcore fan outta me.

I think that there is a band somewhere in a given genre that changes the tide for you. You listen to bands all trying to be the best at what the genre offers and they all mesh into a pot of stew.

For me, No Warning was the salt I'd been needing for several years.

Rating: A

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