Young and In the Way - Amen

Young and In the Way are, surprisingly, a mere four-piece band who are giving a whole new rise to the North Carolina punk scene. i say "surprisingly" because of the amount of noise they create. the sheer intensity of each song/release is simply undeniable. their last.fm entry describes YAITW as, "fast blasts and destructive crust with ties to unrelenting hardcore and black metal", which is not wholly inaccurate. too hardcore to be blackened crust, too blackened to be hardcore. if i were to describe them in a word, which is admittedly not a simple task, it would be "evil dark hardcore". (okay, that's three words, but whose blog is this, i ask you?)

Amen is my personal favorite of their albums thus far, though their newest LP entitled I Am Not What I Am is also pretty ruthless. and sold out on vinyl. damn.

the record kicks off with an instrumental track, which begins with some dreary noise, quickly followed by a bone-crushing wave of distortion and dissonance. awesome, right? without hesitation they begin blasting through "Dark Seed". with the snare smashing through the downbeats and the tempo-change-to-(yes i'm about to use this word)-breakdown, head-banging is imminent. roaring through the record, YAITW puts to use everything from blasts to half-time to d-beat while maintaining an overall gloomy/cold atmosphere. thus, this record not only has the ability to command your undivided attention, but also keeps that attention. in other words, you become involved with the record as opposed to being subjected to - and eventually lost in - the noise.

standout tracks for me include "Worrier" and the final track "The Becoming". the former exhibits a fucking awesome bottoming out of the guitar and drums during the hook line, which will ensure pile-ons for as long as they perform. the latter, however, is truly a masterpiece in and of itself. a fourteen-minute-long epic, "The Becoming" is surrounded on both sides (intro/outro) by an eerily serene arrangement of instruments, and the song - even after kicking in - has a momentum to it that you can feel building and building. the "climax" of the song, if you will, arrives right around the 9:10 mark, and honestly i think it might have the almighty FALL OF EFRAFA beat, at least in terms of rage. debatable as that may be, this track is still fucking incredible in its own right, and from what i can tell the band at large deserves much more attention.

a bandcamp link is provided in this post's title. you can listen to/purchase the digital albums and splits/EPs there. if you'd like to get a hard copy or vinyl (good luck) of any of their releases, keep checking out their official website: here. oh, also, their logo and artwork is badass. just thought i'd mention that as a final word.

GO FORTH AND WREAK HAVOC.