Go it Alone

For the most part I tend to think of hardcore as the last bastion of true emotional outpouring for contemporary music. Hip hop and rap seems to be more concerned with stuff they want or stuff they are going to get. Metal either wants to bellow about goblins or how much their girlfriend sucks. Country music is a running joke that never seems to stop. Indie rock only wants to get laid for their art. Punk is dead. And rock 'n roll just doesn't exist anymore.

That leaves us with hardcore, a place where the disenfranchised and the lonely can pick up a guitar and scream their lungs red raw. Hardcore seems to be only place where you can still be heard and can connect with strangers on emotional levels deeper than anything superficial or trite. Hardcore is when you can put on a record and feel all your nerves become unearthed and exposed. It's where you can listen and go, "Fuck yeah! I feel the same way too. Fuck the world."

As much as I like to piss and moan about hardcore these days, it's my own unwavering bond to fast beats, simple riffs, and pissed off lyrics that keeps me coming back for more and more. It's the only music that makes any sense to me. It's the only music where I can have a bad day turn wonderful with just the drop of a needle on pressed wax.

Go it Alone sophomore release, Histories is what I love about hardcore. Even though Go it Alone don't add anything new to the equation by sounding exactly like Battery, they know exactly what heart strings to pluck as they pummel through eleven tracks of unadulterated poignant discourse. Sometimes Go it Alone go fast, sometimes they go slow. But whatever tempo they choose, it's always heartfelt and personal. The lyrics about solitude, hate, love, and finding your way through a world that just doesn't care are nothing but straight on and truthful.

Histories is a great hardcore album. Everything that Go it Alone does comes off as honest and never contrived. They never talk about killing girlfriends or lifting weights. They don't come off as meatheads. They don't get lost in political nonsense. They just play fast with sweet breakdowns. Go it Alone goes right for the heart and doesn't let go until you are blubbering sweaty mess on a floor in a VFW hall or a church basement. It's just that powerful. I wouldn't recommend Histories to anyone that takes style over substance. I wouldn't lend Histories to anyone that would rather talk about ingenuity or fashion. Histories isn't for the vapid. Histories is for people that want to connect with their music. Histories is for people that love what music does to them and not what music does for them. This is hardcore and this is me falling in love all over again.

8.9 / 10 — Jason