"what the heck is Hoya of Madball doing in this band??" is my first responce when I first slid the debut CD of US supergroup Hazen Street in my CD-player. With a line-up containing Hardcore icons of bands such as Madball, H20 and Cro-Mags (!!!), you'd expect a blast of a hardcore street sound.

But to my utter surprise, what I hear on this album is; 11 songs that remain somewhere between pop, hip-hop and mainstream rock. Quite a shock!

So is this a commercial mainstream street-album? No. The great contradiction within the music are the lyrics, that speak of friends that "have passed away" (hardly because of cancer or falling down stairs, my friends), the life in the streets and breaths an atmosphere of unity and friendship.

So bizar as it is, this extremely accesible record with it's mainstream pop-rock songs is actually essentially a Hardcore record, if it where only lyricly.

Fans of bands such as Box Car Racer, later Blink 182, Lost Prophets or hell even Good Charlotte should hear this. Surprisingly the music works, it is effective and catchy and doesn't bore the listener with Love Song 1.346.652, but stories of the streets. So it should also appeal to less narrow-minded fans of Blood For Blood, Slapshot or hip-hop music like Public Enemy, Ice-T and N.W.A.

Mainstream has never been this hardcore.
Good stuff, this.