War Starts Now

Myspace metal - Wherever you loved or hated it was it's own thing and even somewhat an essential part of metal & hardcore history (in it's own way). It brought in a new wave of young and eager fans, new scenes spawned all over the world and an influx of exciting new bands. This scene Primarily fed off of the Gothenburg inspired metalcore sound (which had started to receive mainstream success after the decline of nu-metal) but there were a handful of bands putting out tunes that weighed heavily on the death metal sound, especially those that mixed beatdown hardcore with slam/ brutal death. Obviously brutal death metal was already messing about with hardcore influences but the new wave did take a more of-the-times-sound approach musically which was very strong in it's core influences or even came off as more brutal death inspired metallic hardcore over hardcore inspired brutal death so generally a lot more core than metal influences/sounds.

Punishing Argument are yet again another Russian brutal death or brutal death adjacent band, they formed, performed. recorded and released music during the myspace era, which while not %100 typical to the myspace sound were still fairly suited for that specific crowd/scene. The band's early material ie a collective of demos and EPs has the breakdowns and pig squeals of myspace deathcore BUT sounded more like Dying Fetus or Dehumanized with a more hardcore tone.

I've chosen "War Starts Now" from their discography as I feel that this is the best that the band has offered.

Opening track, "Coast to Coast Terror" is my personal favourite, it's a fast-paced and straight to the point, the main riff has both hardcore and thrashy death characteristics and transitions into a sick as fuck slam that really shows evidence of the NYDM influence. "Dirty Trash" follows suit with fast drumming to back the hardcore/dm hybrid chugging, it's the fastest song present and ends abruptly before going into the final track, "War Starts Now My Boy". This song follows the previous 2, it's not doing anything different just the same fast paced intro and slowly gets chuggier and slammier before ending in a fairly typical breakdown accompanied by gang vocals, then BAM it's followed by what sounds like Russian pop singing the same lyrics/words of the gang chant, pretty unexpected but funny. I'll also add my 2 cents on the vocal work, mostly rooted in the aggressive hardcore yelling style it does occasionally remind me of Jason Netherton and when Kella gets into guttural territory it is pretty fucking brutal and does enhance the slam/breakdowns it accompanies. This specific EP is the only early PA release to not feature pig vocals, in previous demos he does them and they sound just like any other myspace bree band, not great but not bad, I can tolerate them.

As blunt as I can be, PA are a watered-down Dying Fetus. Strip away the technical death or grind elements alongside any pension for calculated song-writing and add meat & potatoes hardcore/death metal structure/riffs which still isn't even that bad, just isn't very memorable. I would loved to have the seen the band put out more material in the same style but unfortunately they have taken a turn towards straight up metalcore which is fine I guess but yeah it isn't to my liking. If you like brutal death metal that takes a lot of hardcore influence then you should download "War Starts Now", "Region of the Damned" and the two demos, nothing extraordinary but it's fun.