Tuesday 18 December 2018

Album Review: SICK OF IT ALL - Wake The Sleeping Dragon!

Sick Of It All - Wake The Sleeping Dragon!

01. Inner Vision
02. That Crazy White Boy Shit
03. The Snake (Break Free)
04. Bull's Anthem
05. Robert Moses Was a Racist
06. Self Important Shithead
07. To the Wolves
08. Always with Us
09. Wake the Sleeping Dragon
10. 2+2
11. Beef Between Vegans
12. Hardcore Horseshoe
13. Mental Furlough
14. Deep State
15. Bad Hombres
16. Work the System
17. The New Slavery


Sick Of It All are an institution. I've loved the band since their legendary Scratch The Surface album came out, and since then they've proved themselves to be one of the best, if not the best, Hardcore band in the world. All these years later, they haven't mellowed at all, and still rage with the intensity and energy of a band that is as relevant today as they ever were.

They're also as consistently good on record as they are live. In fact, I can't think of a bad Sick Of It All album. I remember a few knuckle-draggers moaning about the marginally more melodic Yours Truly, but those people were wrong. That was a great album too. That's one of the problems with the Hardcore scene. Bands are often chastised for experimenting, even if only a little, and consequently the scene is full of bands that sound frighteningly similar. Sick Of It All however, are leaders not followers, and are still very much at the front of the pack, both as a live act and as song writers. Whatever direction they go in, they manage to put their stamp of identity on it.

Wake The Sleeping Dragon! is yet another lively beast. It's their twelfth studio album and boasts 17 short and sweet nuggets of furious Hardcore, with the longest clocking in at 2 minutes 39 seconds. For me, the stand-out tracks are the unifying Hardcore Horseshoe, the anthemic Always With Us, and the blistering shots of fury that are Bad Hombres, To The Wolves, Self Important Shithead, and the raging beast that is the title track.

Sick Of It All are still awesome, and Wake The Sleeping Dragon! is as solid as I expected it to be. That's all I wanted from them, and they delivered the goods yet again.


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