Incendiary "Change The Way You Think About Pain" Review
Over the past fifteen years, Incendiary have consistently been one of the most poignant and powerful voices in hardcore. Over the past decade and a half, the Long Island band has taken their time with each album, choosing quality over quantity whenever the option presented itself. And while this approach has led to an extremely lean discography for a band with such a presence in their scene, it has also ensured that each release has its own feet to stand on, and nothing ever feels forced.
In this way, the band’s newest offering Change The Way You Think About Pain is Incendiary by the numbers - political and socially aware lyrics over some of the most pissed off music to come out in recent memory. But it’s in the ways the band has evolved in the six years since Thousand Mile Stare where it becomes apparent that something is different this time around.
To put it plainly, Change The Way You Think About Pain is Incendiary outdoing themselves in every way. New sounds shine through all over this record - the most noteworthy change being the overt death metal influences in the instrumentals found throughout the track list. This may be the most “metal” record in Incendiary’s catalog thus far, but Change The Way You Think About Pain still maintains the hardcore identity the band has always stayed true to. “Lie of Liberty” opens with what can closest be described as a grunge riff, but the band is somehow able to make this feel natural, all the while seamlessly pulling from metalcore and hardcore through the song’s under three minute runtime. Many tracks on this album are amalgamations of heavy music influences, and it’s this diversity of sound that allows the record to stay utterly unrelenting while never becoming stale or contrived.
This is not to say the album is a complete departure - it is actually quite far from that. Album highlight “Rats In The Cellar” is largely what one would expect from Incendiary, but the tremolo guitar riffs in the verses keep things fresh, all while building to potentially the most aggressive moment on the entire record. For every song that breaks the norms for this band (“Santosha” and “CTE” immediately come to mind), there is another that brings the focus back to the unrelenting brand of hardcore that Incendiary has built their reputation on.
Change The Way You Think About Pain is what happens when a veteran band refuses to play it safe. Not a dull moment in sight, this is Incendiary adding yet another immensely impressive album to their catalog.
8.5/10
