Early Graves - Goner

August 23, 2010

Reviewer: Chris

Release Date: June 22, 2010
Label: Metal Blade Records/
Ironclad

TRACK LISTING

1.  Goner
2.  Faith is Shit
3.  Old Bones
4.  Rot
5.  MayDay
6.  Wraiths
7.  Trauma
8.  Give Up
9.  Bastard Tears
10.  Harm

Total playing time:  25:46

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*Comments:

What a cruel, sickening mistress fate can be. She’s disgustingly unpredictable and a literal bitch on wheels. Here comes Early Graves with an amazingly brutal hardcore metal album titled Goner and in meanders her most likely well-manicured hand and wipes clean the slate that was this fine band. For those that don’t know of this San Francisco outfit, a tragic loss was suffered when vocalist Makh Daniels passed away after a horrific automobile accident some weeks back, but his legacy lives on in this relentless assault that is both bittersweet and deadly serious.

Goner hit my ears with the first feedback from “Goner” and I immediately thought of a more caustic Black Flag (if that’s even humanely possible). The hardcore/metal elemental efforts are often tried but hardly resonating, yet such is not the case here. Early Graves has all of the rage and resentment of a young Flag or Negative Approach meshed with the same violent feel that death metal was built on so many moons ago. This is, as Exodus once coined, ‘good friendly violent fun’.

The speed and total subservience to the volatility of Goner is pretty much inherent when you agree to open your head to such a musical venture. When you think of speed-meeting-anger, this album is, quite literally it. I can’t boast about the terrific metal-punk direction any more save for taking out ads in all of the trades; this album just destroys everything within a mile radius of the stereo system. Even slower tracks like “Wraiths” still squeeze your larynx in all of the appropriate areas, offering nothing in the way of quarter.

At times the album is as ugly as a wallflower on prom night, but through such blatant disparages is the beauty of a hardcore exercise in honestly angry music. “Give Up” is a total mosh pit tune that makes me genuinely sad I won’t ever get the opportunity to see this great band live. When you hear the cliché about how the music will carry on the legacy, it never seems to ease the loss. I didn’t know Mahk Daniels and Early Graves is new to me, but as much as I like this album I feel the loss as personally as if I grew up with these guys. 

What the metal world needs is more bands like Early Graves that actually produce a hardcore death metal/punk record that actually delivers what it says it will. There may be a million-and-one bands attempting this style to a much more commercially accepted degree, but nothing comes close to the believability of Goner in its stripped down, simplistic rhetoric that can just as easily deviate your septum as entertain your musical palate. I don’t know the future holds for Early Graves, but whatever it may be the band has created a brutal piece of dominating hardcore that these big label wannabes couldn’t even hope to create.

R.I.P. Makh.