Album Review: Your Demise- The Golden Age

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Your Demise is a pretty dense topic. So many people have so many different vices these days, self-destruction stories come nearly a dime a dozen. So how does a hardcore/punk band from the UK relay the message that mankind is causing its own demise? Well, for starters, with a few breakdowns, some carefully crafted choruses, and a singer who sounds really, really angry.

On The Golden Age, Your Demise build upon the US success their most recent album The Kids We Used to Be provided a base for, and intensify things well beyond the boiling point. Vocalist Ed McRae's shirll screams pace the crunching, pummeling guitars provided by Stuart Price and Daniel Osborne. McRae's delivery on The Golden Age is what immediately stands out on opener "The Golden Age," as it feels like he's in your face singing the lyrics, even if you're listening to the album on a laptop in your dimly-lit college dorm. McRae is well on his way to becoming one of the most noteworthy frontmen in the scene on The Golden Age: he's loud, boisterous, and no matter what the band is doing behind him, he finds a way to stick out on each track. The opening track of the album is also the title track, and though McRae drops his own band's name twice, it provides a great framework for what's to come. Second track "These Lights" features McRae's clean vocals, and actually sounds like the songs A Day to Remember wished they could write. "Born a Snake" goes right back to where the title track left off, and the driving guitars will get your head banging almost instantly.

The Golden Age features quite a few cameos from other vocalists, as McRae's screams are accompanied by the likes of Austin Wood from Terror (on "Forget About Me"), Jason Butler of letlive. (on "I'm (not) the One"), and most surprising of all, John Franceshi of You Me at Six (on "A Decade Drifitng"). Butler's appearance will likely be the highlight, as the letlive. vocalist provides even more chaos with his signature voice. Wood's appearance should not be overlooked, though, as "Forget About Me" is probably the most fast-paced song in The Golden Age's arsenal. "A Decade Drifting," which features the pop-punker Franceschi, opens with a pop-punk riff, and segues into one of the more structured lyric patterns, but finds itself turning into one of the album's heaviest breakdowns before Franceschi takes over one more time. The variety of the vocalists who make cameos on The Golden Age are certainly a risky creative endeavor, but in the end, they all actually showing the versatility of Your Demise in a very productive way. Though the varying deliveries are a sign of the band not wanting to be pigeon-holed to a certain genre, it does leave the album a little misguided, and instead of going in one direction very well, the band try to go into several directions, and they get a little lost along the way at some points. The risks pay off more often than not, however, and The Golden Age will be a treat for any mosh-happy teen this summer.

The Bottom Line: The Golden Age is a pure shot of hardcore adrenaline, and in a time where the genre is being done well by very few, Your Demise have the heart, the creative minds, and balls necessary to become a mainstay in the genre for years to come. If you have to run around your room flailing your arms like a madman (or madwoman) to get the anger out of your system to one album this year, it just may be The Golden Age.

Recommended if you rock: Every Time I Die's The Big Dirty, Alexisonfire's Crisis, Enter Shikari without the techno beats