Their name is appropriate. Their music seems panicked, almost chaotic. It’s straight up, in your face hardcore metal and it feels real. Face the Panic is a hardcore band from Buffalo and they have decried the current state of hardcore bands, intimating that it’s going glam. Their debut album is The Reclamation, their answer to the problem in hardcore music.
Face the Panic has a number of years of experience amongst them, being members of other bands such as Every Time I Die and Herod among others. The experience pays off on this raw and gritty record. Musically and lyrically it attacks, aggravates, satiates.
The guitars are muscular and never let up. Chris Murphy and Aaron Ratajczak combine well to present a tough hide of hardcore noise and also some melodic leads which hearken back to the early, early days of metal and punk. They list as influences Danzig, Misfits, Exodus, The Ramones; elements of all those bands can be heard throughout the record.
The drumming is frenetic. I loved the muted slap of the kick drum, the flat crack of the snare, and the tinny taps on the ride cymbal. It’s all reminiscent of some weekend garage band - a bunch of guys who get together right after work and jam to remove all the stress and stupidity of the week they’ve just faced. And it’s effective.
Jay Galvin’s vocals are like sandpaper on the microphone. He manages to belt out some interesting thoughts. In “Land of Opportunists,” a song ostensibly about the baleful state of humanity on a global scale, he forces out lyrics like “most people are ignorant/most people are racist.” At first it seems a stupid and ignorant thing to say. But, it’s true, really.
That’s the way the whole record is. At first, it seems like it’s just not all put together right. But more and more, you start to hear the veracity of the music and the words. You can’t get enough of the hacking chords in “Elitist Fool” or the chanting chorus of “Land of Opportunists.” It’s a satisfying record.
They aren’t pretentious, they aren’t trying to show up anybody. They are simply playing as hard and as intensely as they can and they dare you to Face the Panic.
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