Our friends in the Great White North have been churning out some of the finest in extreme music for well over three decades now. One place where Canada’s contributions to heavy music have been criminally overlooked though is in the world of hardcore. One of Canada’s current hardcore exports though will certainly raise some eyebrows and get people digging for some lost classics of the genre.
Hamilton, Ontario’s Haymaker are nothing short of Canadian hardcore royalty if you think about it. Having formed out of such glorious outfits as Chokehold, Left For Dead and The Swarm, the influence that this collective of musicians has had on the hardcore scene in general is pretty impressive. For as potent as those acts are though it’s possible that none of them gave you the open-handed slap to the face on every single song like Haymaker does. Clearly a case of their name accurately reflecting their art.
Haymaker play old school (circa early 1990’s) hardcore the way it was meant to played. It’s circle pit-inducing, politically driven music meant to induce riots both literally and proverbially. Let Them Rot is the band’s newest four-song assault and one listen through will conjure up visions of walls of death, stage diving madness, and dudes picking up change left and right. It’s almost a throwback record to a time when hardcore was hardcore and “metalcore” wasn’t the derogatory term or synonym for mediocrity that it’s quickly become. For one thing it packs as much violence into four short tracks than most bands could muster in a full-length.
Fans of seminal hardcore acts like those mentioned above, as well as the likes of Integrity, Coalesce, Acrid, Asshole Parade, and Reversal of Man should be all over this release and this band. The only complaint is that it’s just too damn short. The entire thing clocks in at around four and a half minutes. To their credit though Haymaker have created music so damn catchy and so empowering that you’ll find yourself listening to this thing on repeat dozens of times without tiring of it.
Let Them Rot hits the streets on February 7 via A389 Recordings. You can get a taste of it over at the A389 Recordings Bandcamp page.
