Red Death is a thrash band raised on hardcore — its metallic riffs not only smash a crusty d-beat but also shout a punk ethos. On the group's second LP, Formidable Darkness, you can still hear the crossover thrash-boogie of early Corrosion Of Conformity and apocalyptic chaos of Slayer that defined its debut album Permanent Exile, but now with help from producer Arthur Rizk ( Power Trip's Nightmare Logic, Code Orange's Forever), Red Death swings like a sledgehammer through concrete.
As the new wave of D.C. hardcore (NWODCHC if you're nasty) continues to spiral and mature, recklessly stage-diving new blood into a genre that tends to look backward, the bands that seemingly form every week are becoming a reminder that a "scene" doesn't just mean shared sound, but shared ideas. The recently split-up Pure Disgust's self-titled 2016 record was particularly unflinching against systemic racism, from the school-to-prison "Pipeline" that young black men can find difficult to escape, culminating in "White Silence" ("White silence is compliance / White silence is violence").
The members of Red Death have heard their peers and answer with the song "Parasite's Paradise," a burly piece of thrash that not only wrecks everything in its path, but takes direct aim at the systemic flaws that ignore black lives:
"Have a look outsideYou'll see a nation in pain with nowhere to hidePeople of color are losing their livesJust for being alive like you and IThose in power sit and stareAs badges flash and gunshots blarePerhaps a revolt of our ownWill adjourn destructionAll flesh and bone"
"It's a parasite's paradise," later Chad Troncale chants over Ace Mendoza's searing riff. "It's time to tear it down."
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