Records With History And Future

Finally found some time to tell you something about the band Kindred. This band was playing innovative hardcore in the mid-nineties throughout the late nineties. All the members were from the beautiful province of Flanders (Belgium) that is Limburg. Some members are each other’s kin, thus the name for the band.

Kindred isn’t an easy band to comprehend and describe. Beholding their deliverance from a distant position is hard because it is very catchy and aggressive work. Kindred plays a metallic punk genre that is typical of the Good Life label in the nineties. The work of the band and the label are certainly pioneers work. Although pioneering the H8000 style was the main concern of Good Life this non-H8000 band is different but certainly in the same line of Edge-Metal or even Metalcore. Thus also recorded in the legendary Midas Studio.

Both music and lyrics are very intelligent and well worked on. I’ll give it a try to capture this in words since I know the band from their first record and never stopped listening to them throughout the years.

The lyrics are definitely derived and based on philosophic conversations that they had and are very profound. Combining psychological and metaphysical aspects along with ethics and emotions. Very poetical and yet still meaningful, targeting lyrics that are set out to make you reflect deeper than you already do. Of course dealing with animal rights and straight-edge, while making relations with personal development and the inner-self. Also cemented sociological and religious institutions are criticized.

Musically you can recognize Kindred by their metallic riffage and sounds. They have found the perfect balance between sheer hardcore / punk harshness (breakdowns, fast mosh parts) and metallic smoothness and swing (technicality, slayer sounds, …). Acme meets Unbroken is indeed a good way to describe their sound.
Their songwriting is hard to equal and can be described as all of their own. So they pushed the boundaries of modern hardcore back in the 90’s, although this still feels futuristic to this very day. I speak of technicality, but you may not expect something experimental. They haven’t lost their hardcore / punk playfulness, that shines through also because of the lyrics and the gang vocals.

The result of these characteristic factors is that listening to Kindred brings you to a unique hardcore universe that can’t be found anywhere else in the landscape of Metal Core. Nothing to be afraid of though they are a clean and pure set of people defending animal rights, straight-edge and free thinking.

Their first release (1996) was this LP/CD called ‘File 01’. Only 600 came out on vinyl and were divided in 500 on black and 100 on white vinyl. I have never seen someone selling this LP probably because it is pressed in a small turnover but also because the ones who have this LP realize that it is pretty awesome.

The LP cover has got different artwork than de CD, here is a picture of the LP-cover:

Later on (1997) they did a split with Florida’s Culture, where each band delivers three songs exclusive to this release. Good Life pressed 500 pieces of this LP on clear wax. Also an exceptional run of coloured test pressings was done. Namely an orange that was numbered out of 5, a brown numbered out of 6 and finally a yellow test pressing numbered out of 24.

Eventually members of Kindred started a new project called Enemy Of The Sun on the label Malicious Men Records. It came out on midCD and also four songs of this release came out on a 500 made and numbered 7″, called ‘Eclipse’.

Great and crucial band, not to be forgotten is the conclusion!