Push Back Demo 1 cassette
Debut seven-song demo of metal-infused hardcore punk from Massachusetts. A very professional-sounding, discernible, slick-recorded demo, which would be high-quality enough for most bands’ official releases. With tempos ranging from plodding dirges to blastbeats, often within the course of the same song, PUSH BACK brings us palpable anger at any speed. Politically-driven songs seemingly mostly about greed, corruption, police, and gender. In my opinion, the regurgitation of OPERATION IVY lyrics as a spoken word part in the first song to get such a point across was a bit of a jarring choice. The band self-identifies as “heavy metal and black metal-infected HC punk.” While there are some noodly guitar leads and some double-kick rumble, I don’t really hear any aspect of black metal, and would say the band’s metal connection is more closely related to the early 2000s phenomenon of describing any sort of fast hardcore punk band as being “thrash.”