I’m convinced. This band is one of the few playing hardcore the way it’s meant to be. One listen to this album and I think you’ll understand what I mean – like the cover shot of a knife about to find a home in the throat of some poor fucker, Think I Care plunge forward like said shiv, and twist and tear through flesh and veins, before curbing your corpse on the sidewalk. This is hardcore sounding violent again, just like it should.

TIC is among a newer crop of hardcore bands (RNR, Violent Minds, Knife Fight, and many more on the DeadAlive label ) that have me reinvigorated with the genre I was ready to write off a few years back. This is hardcore like an old skinhead remembers. The comparisons with older SSD (as well as a slew of other older Boston bands – a little Deep Wound here, a little DYS there) are accurate: the vocals are pissed off, growling and in your face, daring you to turn the CD off, yet daring you to listen. The music is, in one word, hard. And the whole package leaves me thinking this is one of the better bands of the last ten years.

The lyrics deal with themes common to the genre, yet do it in TIC style: the opening cut prays for a broken neck for those knocked off their soapbox, 28 Visions begs for teeth on a curb, It Surrounds describes the rigors of everyday life and the sheer hate associated with dealing with it. But it’s in the final song, Bitter End, that TIC offer some light at the end of the tunnel, and sum up what they’re about: “Try my best to never break or bend/Staying true til the bitter end.”

When you see this record, pick it up. When this band plays in your area, get to the show. They are among my saving graces of old-style, pissed off hardcore.

September 2003

Review by Sean Holland