“Now the sun is shining but I’m soaked in rain”
Long Island hardcore vets Incendiary are back with a brand new record, Change The Way You Think About Pain. Four albums in fourteen years may seem few and far between, but the band is actually reaching rarified air in the genre. Not a lot of hardcore bands stay together that long let alone release four albums. For anyone unfamiliar, the band is politically charged metallic hardcore, with their latest effort being their leanest and meanest yet.
When the band dropped “Bite The Hook” in March, seemingly out of nowhere, this album rose high into most anticipated album lists. Now that it’s here, it will be in a lot of top ten lists by the end of 2023. Vocalist Brendan Garrone expressed how this far into a band most either drastically change or stay the same. Incendiary proves album after album that not only do they evolve musically, progressively making their sound bigger, faster and more aggressive, but thematically as well.
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Since 2013’s Cost of Living, Incendiary has solidified their place as a band with a message criticizing socio-political issues. It put an exclamation point on the system that is built for us to fail. When Thousand Mile Stare came out in 2017, Garrone explored a more personal introspective approach lyrically. Expressing that it reflected growing up and looking back at life in a different light and using that to move forward. Change The Way Think About Pain marries the two together, diving into the hyper-polarization of American society and how we mask pain by suppressing it.
Hardcore first and foremost, is about community and having something important to say. Incendiary delivers that tenfold. In the last six years, so much has changed politically. America has been split in the middle, with the media pushing everyone to choose a side. The ones pulling the strings have zero interest in our well-being. We’re just a cog in the machine that makes their pockets fatter while making life harder for the working class. The band gives us a voice that represents US, not the upper class trying to paint a narrative for us. “Echo Of Nothing” and “Lie Of Liberty” push us to look for the truth past what is shoved in our faces. Giving us a perspective of free thinking and forming an unbiased stance, an outlet to unite rather than divide.
The band cites East Coast influences such as Glassjaw and Vision Of Disorder that shine bright in “Jesus Bones”, “Host/Parasite” and “CTE”. Letting dissonant chords, driving bass lines, and unconventional patterns take them above the norm of most hardcore bands. It’s not just power chords and breakdowns, it’s metal-infused riffs, and impressively creative guitar leads that make your head turn. While always being fast and heavy, their sound is never pigeonholed to fit a certain mold.
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Change The Way You Think About Pain is a record that does what it says on the tin and makes you think. Looking inward to deal with daily life struggles and the overwhelming political climate. It’s easy to push these problems and pain to the side, but that’s only speeding up the timer on a ticking time bomb. We’re not alone in suffering, together, we can push through. Incendiary is for anyone and for everyone. They always have something important to say, and we should be listening.
Buy it, Stream it, or Skip it?: Buy it. New material from Incendiary is a special treat and should be treated as such.
