Delivering on promise.

Pain of Truth’s meteoric rise is something straight out of a movie script, as their debut EP No Blame… Just Facts turned the young band into a household name in hardcore seemingly overnight. Quickly occupying headline festival slots across the country with a mere eight-song catalog (clocking in at a combined less than twenty total minutes of music), all eyes have been on Pain of Truth for what will come after they successfully managed to capture lightning in a bottle. The band’s debut full-length Not Through Blood stands to prove that this feat was not a fluke, and succeeds in doing so in every imaginable way.

To put it plainly, Not Through Blood is incomprehensibly pissed off - something that is made abundantly clear from the opening moments of “Lifeless on the Ground”. The album kicks off with a filthy bass line before transitioning into the first of many earth-shattering riffs designed to cause extreme bodily harm in the pit as the band shouts their own name like a declaration over a machine-tight instrumental. The track pauses briefly before Pain of Truth comes back in sounding like a band who’s been at it for a lifetime, not just a few short years. This confidence oozes from every moment of the record, as its laundry list of all-star features never manages to outshine the band whose name is on the cover.

The album flies through standout tracks, like the blistering “In Your Heart” or colossal single “Actin’ Up”, the latter boasting one of the most absurdly violent breakdowns on the entire record. Freddy Cricien of Madball’s appearance on “You and Me” comes across as the ultimate cosign for a proud New York hardcore band, and Cricien and vocalist Michael Smith play off each other effortlessly, adding an undeniable chemistry to an absolute powerhouse track in its own right. “This Falls on You” and “Too Late” are utterly unrelenting and undeniable in their aggression, and set the stage perfectly for album highlight “Pickin’ at Scraps”. The only track without a feature, “Same Old Story”, also manages to be the only instrumental song on the record, and serves as something of an extended outro to “Out of Our Hands”. The album comes to a close with the lethal one-two punch of “Under My Skin” and title track “Not Through Blood” - two of the hardest songs of the year and a fitting end to an absolute pummeling debut album.

On Not Through Blood, Pain of Truth opt to not reinvent the wheel. Instead, they take the wheel and beat the shit out of everyone in their way, resulting in the definitive hardcore album of 2023. Unshaken in the presence of an abundance of esteemed guests, and in the face of impossibly high expectations, Pain of Truth have raised the bar only they had previously set for themselves.

9/10