Hailing from New Jersey (which as The Nerve Agents put it is the "Heart of Hardcore"), Mother Night drops a wicked set of jams on Lifestyle / Deathstyle for us to listen to their abundance of energy and enthusiasm. An honest band that exudes New Jersey in all its harshness, these guys come from a very typical Jersey background of toiling in basements and exemplify the road that many bands from that hellhole (I can say this because I live here, all you other jokers have no right) have to take. After two demos and a 7" record, Mother Night offers Lifestyle / Deathstyle to document their collective effort and hard work.
Lifestyle / Deathstyle kicks things off with "Concrete," a somewhat mid-paced bruiser of a song that just kind of punishes listeners until the break or bridge, which has this real weird guitar lead that breaks the song up a bit; top this off with a strong vocal performance that sounds more yelled than screamed or shouted. Mother Night follows this up with the noisy entrance of "Heartbeat of America" before locking step into more mid-paced hardcore while the vocals sound a bit more emotive than the previous track. "Dragging You Down With Me" sounds as though there is a more urgent mood and offers variation in the music that are not evident elsewhere on the album, which sort of forces the song into the limelight amongst the rest of what is available on Lifestyle / Deathstyle.
The first couple of times that I listened to Lifestyle / Deathstyle, the album just kind of blew by without my noticing it; it took about five spins of the CD before I started picking out bits and pieces of what I like about it. This is not indicative of it being a poor record but rather that it is just a bit too many mid-paced tempos at times on the record for my normal taste, which forces me to pay more attention to it. I do dig several songs on the album and hope to hear more from Mother Night.
