Jacknife - Today We Fight
by James

Metal and hardcore go together like peas and carrots, lately. You will be hard pressed to find a band playing heavy music today that doesn’t have elements of one and not the other. Saying a band is metalcore now is akin to saying a band was nu metal in the late 90s. It doesn’t really tell you much about the band’s actual sound other than they have elements of both metal and hardcore. Jacknife, in my personal estimation, is a metal band with a hardcore kid singing for them. Saying it works for them is doing a great disservice to the sound that Jacknife unleashes on their latest EP, Today We Fight. The mixing of gloriously metal riffage with utterly visceral vocals is truly a thing of beauty. Sure, there are breakdowns, but Pantera had breakdowns. Everything about this band’s rhythm section screams metal to mine ears and anyone who can listen to this album all the way through without throwing up the horns at least once is somehow mentally deficient, if you ask me. Unlike so many of their contemporaries, Jacknife has no clean vocals, whatsoever. The fact that Joe never ventures into the oh-so-tired realm of melodic vocals (usually some dude whining about his girlfriend that broke up with him when he was 13) helps to maintain the aggression even when guitars the do break into cleaner parts. It’s simple kids; if you want to be heavy then be heavy and if you want to be pretty then be pretty, but very few bands can pull off both. Jacknife starts heavy, stays heavy and does not let up for one millisecond. I dig it.