The care and creativity shown in the beautiful cover design alone make this an ambitious compilation project worthy of note. Wonderful post-modern gothic imagery sets a mood that is immediately reinforced by cryptic bagpipes fronting the opening track, "Ballad of Remembrance," by Redeem. The song itself perpetuates the theme of this compilation, and offers a heartfelt spoken word mixed with anguish laden screams and cries — and even though it has been done before a million times, it works, well, very well.
This compilation is the first release by upstart NSH Records, contains 24 tracks by 24 bands, and is designed to be a collection of what's going on, and what's coming up in the Christian underground. The mission is accomplished by featuring fairly established (signed) punk and hardcore acts like Blaster the Rocketman (sci-fi punk), Headnoise (old school hardcore punk), Twotimer (new school punk), Pink Daffodils (girl-fronted artsy hardcore — excellent), and Redeem (new school hardcore) alongside a lot of indie newcomers-with-promise like Guilty Nation (new school hardcore — standout track), Witness Protection Plan (spaz-core punk), Shameface (brutal metalcore), Side Walk Slam (new school punk), Edify (blistering hardcore punk), Facedown (real emo — versus of course that groupie poppish crap which is thankfully absent on this comp), and many others. There are a few bands on here that could use some more garage time and creativity, a couple tracks with too-raw production, but for the most part this is a good collection of indie potential and know how. Definitely a compilation for people who can appreciate the harder sides of the raw underground/indie spirit.
