Just Die Already
(Demo)
7.7
At first glance, I thought the J.D.A. (Just Die Already) would be a lot more hardcore than metal. This quintet hails from San Francisco, not typically known as the breeding ground of hardcore, so I thought that this would be pretty interesting. For those of you outside of the Bay Area that haven’t heard of J.D.A., these guys are good but also are almost an anomaly. They can sound hardcore, metal, metalcore, punk, even screamo at times. Don’t misunderstand me at all these guys are very metal/hardcore, but you can definitely see the influences.
From the start of their demo, they have pounding guitars, outstanding vocals (in every different genre), excellent drum-lines and an overall bass sound that never leaves you without a heavy beat. I really thought that these guys were going to try to be Bleeding Through II prior to listening; coming from the West Coast and being defined as “vicious hardcore” which, after listening to “Love Lost in a Hail of Gunfire”, I’m not that impressed with. However after a thorough listen, there are many differences. First and foremost, J.D.A. does not use a keyboard in any of their songs, which I think is only beneficial to the song making process as a heavy hardcore band. I see a lot of the same positives in J.D.A.’s lead vocalist that I see in Schieppati (BT) plus the fact that J.D.A. has a lot more range than Bleeding Through. J.D.A. also offers a very brutal, melodic sound as most hardcore/ metalcore bands in the industry do, but I feel that they have an even edgier sound, i.e. heavier and almost haunting. And finally, you can almost always tell where Bleeding Through is going, with J.D.A. their musical inspirations are so diverse that the whole band can turn from extreme metal to screamo in the matter of seconds, and it sounds pretty damn good too.
Anyway, this 4-song demo was not only enlightening to me, but also very entertaining. At times I thought I was listening to Atreyu, Hatebreed, Unearth, Thursday, and even God Forbid all wrapped into one, which you wouldn’t think would sound very good but it does.
“Carlito’s Way” sets the tone with the band really hitting on all cylinders. I don’t know about the punk interludes at certain points, but they didn’t last too long and actually complemented the metal quite well. You can tell immediately that this band comes from many different musical backgrounds in the way they play their music. Don’t be fooled however, this band is very hard.
“Biased” opens with an eerily distant guitar playing in the foreground as screaming vocals accompany instrumental entrance. The transitions are very good throughout the demo but for this song in particular they all phased in and out properly and I think this is the best bass play on the demo.
“Detrimental Speed” opens with a slow harmonious guitar and Maynard James Keenan-like singing in the background laced with excellent growls from the lead vocalist totally enforcing his will as the music follows suit. They almost sound a bit like System of a Down on their first album where Serj would scream awkwardly at musical shifts. But like S.O.A.D. it works out and the chaos and anarchy of the tempo soon turns into synchronization.
“Catastrophe” has political overtones all over it, speaking about 9/11. Although the message was accurate and the anger was felt, I think the lyrics could have been written better. The guitars however were awesome but the song was only 2:18 long, which means less-transition and not as much room to fully come out your shell musically. Some bands can pull off the quick lightning attack song that gets you going (Hatebreed) and you come away with something but I didn’t with this one. The rest of the demo had songs of 4:00 or more, which I felt were more warranted for the many directions of this band. This particular song left a lot to be desired in my opinion.
On the whole, J.D.A.’s demo was pretty damn good. Not great, but this band has a lot of potential. Three out of the four were very good which is rare for an unsigned band that plays with so many different musical styles. If I were you, I’d wait until the production gets cleaned up which isn’t too far from being good and wait for the songwriting to improve in certain areas and I’d definitely pick up whatever these guys dish out. Lots of potential here.
