(Andy Synn goes a few rounds with France’s Beyond the Styx and their new album, Sentence)
As I’ve said several times before, my journey into Metal began with my discovery of Punk/Hardcore.
Beginning with bands like Thrice, AFI, and BoySetsFire I eventually gravitated towards more overtly “metallic” Hardcore groups like Earth Crisis, Zao, and Vision of Disorder, and it wasn’t long until I fell/dived headlong into the even heavier side of the Metal scene.
The thing is, while I never really felt like I fit in as a Hardcore kid – I wasn’t really into the fashion (I probably wear more basketball vests now than I ever did back then), I wasn’t vegan or straight-edge (I do about one non-meat day a week these days, and have been known to drink the entire NCS crew under the table), and always felt like karate-dancing in the pit was stupid (and even, arguably, contrary to what “the scene” was supposed to be about) – I never lost my love of the music.
And while recently this has manifested itself in a series of reviews of some killer Death Metal/Hardcore crossover albums (check those out if/when you have time), it was the release of Sentence by French Metallic Hardcore crew Beyond the Styx, which really took me back to my roots this month.