War Criminal "Suffer" EP Review

Up-and-Coming Maine hardcore band, War Criminal, Recently released a 6 song EP titled "Suffer". Now this really isnt their 1st official release besides the demos they put out back in March of this year, and due to being a very big fan of that I was extremely excited to hear "Suffer". Straight out of the bag the intro track starts off with a siren, which immediately sets an ominous mood, and gets crushed under the heaviness of a Cro-mags/Pantera-esque opening riff.

At the 1:27 mark we kick things off by speeding things up a shit ton, and introduce some harsh vocals on "Love Cycle", the second track of this release. The entire band does a great job in capturing the hardcore punk sound. Lyrics full of angst and anger, guitars ringing out, really bringing in the heaviness of it all. Just an overall solid track.

As the track fades out my favorite track of EP begins, "Brain Dead". This track starts off with a bang! From the beginning to the end the song is definitely one to Two Step to, It had me moving, not gonna lie. The lyrical content of this track is still very anxious, but ties together the angry feel of the song perfectly, and I personally relate a lot more to this song than most of the others. "This world is fucked. Gone to shit. We've had enough"!

"Feel the Steel" Is the 4th track off this EP, and in my opinion one of the most poetic of the 6. Very strong opening, but after the 30 second mark is when things really start to kick in. Lyrics about the mental anguish everyone has to deal with, and the toll it takes on you. This song makes me see images of circle pits and pile ups! The instrumental for this song was rather underwhelming to me, until about 2/3 the way through when the breakdown hit. I must say I almost punched my laptop out of getting so pumped up. Great job dudes, haha!

Track 5 titled "In Chains" Has to be the one song I didn't care for as much as the others besides the opening bass riff that gave me that nostalgic feel of 90s hardcore. The track overall did very little for me, and pretty much served as a 2 minute intro for the final track on the EP.

Track 6 is "Curse". The band put out a video on YouTube for this song, Which is very smart, because this is a very clean, and very hard hitting track. They start things off with some pounding drums, which again sends imagery of people marching back-and-forth in the pit ready to go ham, but they stepped it up as soon as that squeal from the guitars came in, and they went back to those Cro-Mags style riffs. The 3rd song on the tracklist may be my overall favorite, but as far as lyrics go, "Curse"...That's got to have my favorite line of this whole EP "Pull myself outside of this fucking Earth, Pull myself outside of my fucking worst, Pull myself outside of where the tables turn, I don't know my life but ill fucking learn"...Now I totally understand why the band decided to use this track as their lyric video! I mean this with all sincerety this is a band you need to check out!

I give this EP 4 stars (4.2 if you really wonder). War Criminal is definitely a band to check out If you are fans of bands like Cro-mags, Homewrecker, and Comeback Kid.

Pick up this EP here: https://warcriminalhardcore.bandcamp.com