My City Burning - White Lies, Black Eyes

“More hardcore than Jenna Jameson!”, that’s how the members of My City Burning describe their straight forward style of hardcore. Now, I unfortunately haven’t had the opportunity to find out myself how hardcore JJ really is, but I can imagine she’s a rough ride when she tries to toy around on the speed of My City Burning’s music! Bring it on baby!

It’s obvious that hardcore bands nowadays have a hard time coming up with something completely refreshing. As goes for several other genres by the way. Still, that doesn’t always have to a bad thing. It’s also about the passion, aggression and heaviness of their music. And in that, My City Burning definitely succeeded. This debut release of the band has an honest hardcore sound with mostly up-tempo songs. Songs that are easily recognizable after a couple of spins and soon make you bang your head and mosh around your room.

The music overall has a nicely “filled” feeling. There’s no emptiness on this release, hardly any time to catch your breathe. This gives you the feeling you’re actually listening to something big despite the fact the album only lasts seventeen minutes. After a while the songs tend to sound a bit alike but with only six songs on this effort, that’s not a problem at all. Especially closer ‘Black Hearts Unite’ makes you wanna hear more of this band. Kinda like your adrenaline is still pumping through your veins and suddenly there’s nothing to keep that system going. What a great, powerful song to end this EP with!

In the end, My City Burning did what it had to do. Deliver an aggressive piece of passionate hardcore in the vein of hardcore giants like Terror and Walls Of Jericho. Great vocals, pumping music and all in all a nice in-between snack because of its fairly short length. If they’re as powerful live as they are on this release, they sure as hell will blow you away!