"Fusion" has become such a dirty word for punks, and with pretty good reason. It's a sad fact that some great '90s bands like NoMeansNo ended up paving the way for some of the worst musical trainwrecks of the late '90s and '00s. For every band who got it right (San Francisco's The Mass), there were a hundred that are just unlistenable garbage. The pendulum swung, and now the DIY kids are so obsessed with back to basics "purity" (imitation) that almost everything just sounds the same, a trend that's no less tiresome and a lot more regressive.
Then a band like New York's Chain Gang Grave comes along, and things don't seem so grim anymore. Sounds that ride the line between the purity that hardcore needs to stay honest, and the progression that it needs to keep growing. This unholy fusion of hardcore, noise rock and death metal doesn't feel forced, it feels like just what I need.
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