Album Review: Until Your Heart Stops - Errors
For an album of dissonant hardcore as in-your- face as Until Your Heart Stops latest full-length 'Errors', it sure starts in an unusually mellow fashion. Unhealthy Situations sees a lone female voice carry a melancholy melody over uneasily ringing guitar chords. The name is apt. This is swiftly dispelled however as title track 'Errors' bursts into sludgy life, lilting along like an angrily drunken alcoholic on a midweek bender; all sneers, snarls and rolling movement. The minute-long 'Zodiac Signs' follows on seamlessly without a break in proceedings, doubling the tempo and bringing the aggression up with it before again flowing straight into 'A Cult Classic' which rounds-off the triad appropriately. The way that each song flows into the next is impressive; they’re all three distinct but part of a whole.
Next track 'Longest Flight Home' is similarly and unsurprisingly uncompromising but 'Caffeinated Blues' provides respite, a calm in the middle of the storm before 'Regressed' and 'Fools Gold' again deliver a one-two punch of fast, vicious noise that has no reason to be as listenable as it is.
It’s left to final song 'Fish Ranch Road (The Wanderer)' to add intrigue into the mix. Though slower and more measured than much of what has come before, it’s certainly not lighter on the intensity. The rise and fall of the arrangement with it’s repeated guitar riff and overlaid vocal motifs builds up hypnotically to a climax bolstered by horns and pure anguished vitriol. It’s a surprising ending that demonstrates a depth that the rest of the record only hints at.
'Errors' is everything a hardcore album should be: short, aggressive, energetic and vital; but what Until Your Heart Stops have managed to do is squeeze in a sense of chaotic melody that exists despite a lack of sung vocals. That alone is no mean feat.
3.5/5
'Errors' by Until Your Heart Stops is available now on Creator-Destructor Records.
Official Website
Until Your Heart Stops in Bandcamp and Facebook.
Nick Worple
