Records With History And Future

90's Hardcore Punk and more

BLADE Release New Recordings

Blade has a significant meaning in and vision on nowadays Hardcore which I will try to elaborate in this article. This write-up begins with a review of their newest record and ends with an earlier recorded 7 inch release. There are also has some discography details.

BLADE obviously takes influences from 90’s metalcore. You can hear that from first listen. Although it needs to be said that it’s definitely not repetitive or similar sounding to the bands the are inspired by. I hear a lot of All Out War heavy hitting riffs in their sound for example, maybe some Morning Again metal-melody but definitely also Congress and Earth Crisis sounds are involved. Not that it’s a reincarnation of the H8000-area sound somewhere else in Belgium (Limburg), definitely not. They do it right and with this I mean they continue to set an updated trend of that metallic hardcore that emerged in the 90’s with Integrity and Ringworm up to this very day in 2013.

They just released  their newest recordings (recorded this winter), under the name “Armed With Abstinence”. That you can buy a download or hard copy CD from on several places. Support real hardcore, music and bands by getting a legal copy!

They already had three titles released before this: respectively a demo CD-r, a split 10 Inch and a 7 Inch.

Firstly their demo 2007 which was self-released on a CD-r. In my opinion, this ain’t bad but too heavy on the Integrity trip. A little bit to much of Integrity to be original and progressive. Although I hear it’s the best time-period that they are inspired from. Namely the “Humanity Is The Devil” period. I guess this DIY release is almost nowhere to be found.

So consequently they gave these exact same songs a decent release later on a 10 Inch split vinyl with Goldust shortly after in the same year 2007. The 10 Inch vinyl exists in two versions; black (/100) and colored vinyl (/400) in a gatefold sleeve. You can listen to these tracks here. The label that released this is BreakxOut Records from Hamburg in Germany. You can still order this from some distro’s, even on colored vinyl. I see them for sale at Good Life webstore and Demons Run Amok distribution on eBay.

As it appears I already have the third release of earlier (2009) BLADE in my collection but never came to write about it before. Look at the typical nineties artwork (fire-spitting dragon fighting knights in harnesses) in a beautiful, warm and hazy looking color-scheme.
I interpret it as such; the ethical mission started by 90’s hardcore and continued nowadays by Blade couldn’t be symbolized more with this imagery. Good versus evil fighting each other as well on the inside and outside of people. Outside as in this music or message they try to bring forward in the contemporary Hardcore landscape. Even if demons appear bigger than us we gather to fight them still. In the formation of a Straight-Edge band they voice their anger and discontent. But they also express regret about the current hardcore scene. They still want to bring a decent message with intelligent content, which is a bit forgotten nowadays. As it’s all about sensation, being though and not thinking about good and right so much anymore.
BLADE “Lambs To The Slaughter” 7 inch
The title track of this 7inch features Hans from LIAR fame on vocals and was released by Ugly And Proud Records. The track “Lambs To The Slaughter” has a faster intro with loads of melody also and is a protest against warfare. And shows musical influences taken from Ringworm and Integrity.The lyrical writing style is like the nineties writing style; dark, symbolic and showing the wrongs and rights of things. An approach to ethical side of things happening in our world. Also showing a deeper conscience of human nature and intelligence overall.

And they aren’t shy in saying they are Straight-edge too. Straight-edge pride and ethics in their song-texts. The fact that they are still straight-edge combined with this style of music is a real powerful message as it truly was and should remain up to this day. Thanks Blade!

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