Review of Hoods - The King Is Dead

No strangers to metallic and incredibly aggressive hardcore, Hoods do their part to help fill up the bucket full of albums you're destined to forget about. Having found themselves a new home on Eulogy after having released material both on Stillborn and Victory, they've also managed to pick up a few mildly questionable ideas in the process. I've been dreading reviewing this and I don't have any real reason behind it. Hoods definitely haven't written a bad album, but it's one where I have a hard time picking out either good or bad things. Blah blah blah, the stylings of Hatebreed and Terror. Blah.

I find myself torn between barely liking and disliking The King Is Dead. Nearly every song has at least one good part, but that also means that every song also has at least a few average or bad parts. In the case of both the title track and the following song, "Lost Hope", things start out strong and energetic, take a slight decline, and then pick back up. One thing I can say without reservation is that I'm not a fan of overproduced vocals in hardcore music. Given the idea that part of how hardcore music thrives is the raw element of it, it seems somewhat pointless to record and track the vocals in the way they sound on this release. Fortunately, certain songs like "26 Seconds of Hate" and "Ernie Cortez" feature a different vocal tone which sounds infinitely better and more fitting to Hoods' anthemic and chunky delivery. Up until the sixth track, whatever complaints I have are comparatively minor, but once "Heartless" hits, the listener is greeted with forty-five seconds of dissonant picking followed by a few satisfying verses, but then the song structurally seems to fall apart in a mess of breakdowns and more of that irritating nu-metal dissonance. Add to the fact that I believe there were keyboards in an earlier track and you have yourself one west coast hardcore identity crisis.

Overall, I'm going to have to pass on this one. There's just something about it that doesn't latch on and force me to repeat it again and again. The release as a whole just lacks a real sense of purpose and direction, and as a result, the good parts that reside in virtually each song fail to lift The King Is Dead out of a position of mediocrity.

Release Details

Hoods

The King Is Dead

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