The first hardcore show I went to was Death By Stereo and some other bands playing in Chico 2003 (I think the month was September). Before that, I’d seen Hatebreed at Ozzfest in 2000 (I think the month was August). I remember the show, because I came early, Mohawk fully spiked, ready to get punk as fuck and hopefully make a ton of new friends. They were opened by this weird rock band called The Kinison, who I found to be very unique and interesting. The singer was wearing bright coloured women’s clothing, and the music was hardcore, but at the same time, not aggressive or concerned with sounding tough. I was intrigued, and I think I was the only audience member there who didn’t hate them.
Little did I know, that a mere seven years later, I would get bored easily with an album just because it presented the same formula that so much emo and metalcore has been doing for years now. I don’t fault the band, they’re doing a great job of playing music, it’s just that the style of music has nowhere to go. Not only did the concept of emo become so universally hated, that the musical style can barely fight to stay alive, but I feel there’s been a sincere lack of inspiration in the style. It’s become stagnant. It seems like nobody knows what to do with it anymore.
Let’s look at it this way. We start with rock n’ roll, which goes through a number of radical changes before a substyle called ‘punk rock’ develops like a festering wound on the sickly pale body of rock. Once punk rock get’s picked up, a different style develops called hardcore punk. After about twenty years of hardcore punk, emotional hardcore (or ‘emo’) spawns. That’s a substyle of a substyle of a substyle. Once you get that specific, can we really be surprised if there’s nowhere else for a musical body to go. This is dissolving into a highly abstract malarkey about how I feel genre specificity is bad for music. I haven’t even talked about Haste The Day yet.
I think Haste The Day wouldn’t call themselves ‘emo’ (which perhaps has to do more with the term being a pariah more than the band’s stylistic differences). I suppose as an album, Attack of the Wolf King is easy to enjoy for a dedicated fan of this style of music. Again, this is a solid album, but I suppose what upsets me about it, is there’s none of the innovation or honesty that I felt in earlier projects, including earlier projects from Haste The Day. Whether you call it ‘emo’ or not, the style of music Haste The Day is playing on Attack of the Wolf King is a uniform of conformist art, a pathetic, formulaic, shadow of what was once excitingly original. Many fans of this style of music have moved on to the next trend, and I can’t honestly blame them, because in an album like Attack of the Wolf King, there’s nothing to hold out for. For future generations, this isn’t going to be anybodies first hardcore album, and if it is, that’s a crying shame.