Review by Dillon Crader
Old Lines’ new album, No Child Left Behind is a very different and unique sounding album. This record sounds like hardcore mixed with noise, similar to the band Full of Hell. That being said, the album as a whole is very sporadic and has a bunch of noise. At times, No Child Left Behind does seem to have a lot of thrash as well.
I will say right off the bat that this album is really unique because being a fan of hardcore music, because there really aren’t many bands that I listen to that have a sound like Old Lines. The vocals on the album stay prominently the same the whole album; low, scratchy, with deep growls. I didn’t see too many different uses of the vocals, though and to be honest I wasn’t very impressed with the vocal work. Aside from that though, the guitar and bass work is amazing on this record. The guitars were very punchy and had an awesome tone, which reminded me of many other hardcore bands that I listen to, and the beginning to “The Hunt(ed)” has an amazing introduction with a nice sludge/distorted sounding bass. The song is very fast-paced, much like the rest of the album, and very punchy, which I enjoy. “The Hunt(ed)” also displays the amazing amount of talent the drummer has.
No Child Left Behind as a whole, though, did seem to flow together and many tracks sounded the same to me. It was hard to pinpoint differences in songs with the vocals sounding similar in most of the tracks and all the noise that Old Lines uses. This album was just very hard for me to get into because of the fact that many of the songs were very short or sounded similar. If you enjoy very chaotic and noise sounding hardcore, though, I would definitely recommend No Child Left Behind.
Rating: 2.5/5
Listen to “The Hunt(ed)”