Velocity
Eleftheria
5.2
I was just thinking the other day that I don’t hear nearly enough Greek hardcore in day-to-day life. Well thankfully, the new album from Velocity fell into my lap, and what better way to celebrate my 100th MetalReview dissection! Eleftheria is a flashback to the glory days of 1992, back when hardcore was a defined sound, that of heavy, metalized punk with thrash sensibilities. Unlike the label-bearers today, many of which are basically metal bands, influenced by the pure grooves of Sepultura, with a throwback sense of ideology. This is NYHC straight from the southern Mediterranean. Now as much as I enjoy the nostalgia this album produces, there’s no question that it’s a dated sound, but then again, Europe seems to stick with musical styles for far longer than we fickle Americans.
Velocity are perfectly capable of pulling off the NYHC sound, with all the little touches that you’d expect; aggressive power chord strumming, gang vocals, and that old trick where everything cuts out except for one guitar that plays the riff alone, then the rest come back into the picture. Eleftheria doesn’t approach the greatness of albums like Madball’s Set It Off, but there are a few strong tracks on here. “Fight Them” is one of those, and one of the few songs in English! Most of the other titles are in Greek, and I don’t even think our web editor will display the Greek letters, but song 11 is just Slayer-fast, and if given a more vicious distortion, would make for some sick thrash. Song 5 conveys the urgency of a good punk song played at 150%, just the way I like it.
It goes without saying that Velocity is certainly not breaking any new ground, and is definitely not Millennium Metal, but it is a fun little throwback. NYHC was a great sound back in its day and was a chief musical inspiration in my high school years. The songwriting here is pretty generic, but this style doesn’t really demand far-reaching innovation, just loads of energy. If you love old hardcore, but are sick and tired of spinning all of your old Agnostic Front and Sick of It All discs, you might want to check out these crazy Greeks.
