Vengeance

Usually in heavy music playing a melodic version of a genre implies watered down and ironically also fewer melodies and more often than not poor rehashed excuses as ideas. So many melodic (insert genre here) bands are monotonous unadventurous snooze fests. However there is one genre in which the opposite is true and that genre is crust punk. Melodic crust has more ideas, more melodies and is more adventurous than normal crust. Tragedy are the banner holders of melodic crust in the US with a global impact not only on the crust punk scene but also on various other scenes and genres. When I look at their discography I think among the gems they released Vengeance is their peak. Also FYI I do totally love classic straight forward crust like Disrupt and DooM etc but they have other strengths and I dare say melodic and non-melodic crust complement each other nicely

The basic formula of Tragedy seems like every other crust punk band out there. There is some Motörhead and of course classic crust, especially of the Swedish kind, and lastly a touch of heavy metal. However they take this basic formula and switch things up. Like for example on the track “The Day After” the melodies seem to be derived from mournful doom/death while usually a crust punk band would take the playing techniques from that genre instead. Their sense of melody and daring in subtle ways in terms of song writing and structures is what makes this album as good as it is. While the also excellent preceding band His Hero is Gone might show case wilder experimentation they had not yet mastered the art of writing a song on its own.

Okay Tragedy might not be the darkest, most brutal or heaviest crust punk band out there. I say that it is not necessary for a band in heavy music to go for the extremes. Okay sure extremes had to be pushed to get where we are today but that also expanded the borders within which a band with such a superb sense of melody and masters of song craft like Tragedy can flourish.