Internal AffairsHailing from the riot city of Los Angeles, Internal Affairs brings fourth 16 tracks of fast three chord hardcore anthems with enough crunch and punch to put you on your ass. Featuring numerous ex-members of many of the great recent LA hardcore bands, most notably Carry On, Internal Affairs already have released a demo, 7" and two splits and toured around the world in their short existence. Now they have stepped it up another notch with their first full length effort, by far their best material to date. Starting off this fine debut full length is "You're Dead," which features Bo Thompson of Snake Eyes, and this song is just pure annihilation. It starts off with a slick mid tempo breakdown, with just the bass and drums pounding away until they kick it into high gear for the rest of the song. Internal Affairs has a real knack for being fast, but not too fast and knowing when to slow it down just enough to really get their point across. And since I'm on the topic of guest vocals, George of Blacklisted appears on "My Mind" and Martin of Donnybrook appears on "Failure." One of, if not the best tracks on the album is the song "Life's blood," a track that just beats conviction into your eardrums. And as a added bonus there's even a Chain of Strength cover for "letdown"at the end of track sixteen, which is just frosting on the cake. Lyrically, IA is obviously about straight edge pride and conviction, betryal, kids with no heart, loyalty,etc.. Pretty much the standard fair for hard ass straight edge hardcore. The production on this is damn good, everything sounds right on the money. The guitar has crunch, the drums are right where they should be and the bass sounds amazing and adds a LOT to this album. There's a lot of extra treble on the bass and it makes for a great listen, especially for this type of hardcore. The layout is well done, the cover features a vicious eagle drawing that has its claws holding onto the IA logo that was made from the LA dodgers logo. Inside the booklet it has pictures of each band member with the lyrics to each song, very nicely arranged. Bottomline, if you like straight edge hardcore you sure as hell better get this, and even if you don't, this is that god damn good that you as well, better get this. LA hardcore is stronger than ever right now people, don't sleep.
Rating: 4/5
Songs worthy of Replay: Life's Blood, My Mind, Time and Time again Duration: 21:38