Blue Monday Rewritten

In the last five years, traditional hardcore has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity after becoming all but extinct in the late 90's, when metal-core became a dominant force. While many of these bands restrict their lyrical content to fighting, being straight edge, fighting about being straight edge, etc., Vancouver's Blue Monday take a stab at making socially conscious, emotionally charged hardcore on their Bridge Nine debut, Rewritten. Despite a few stumbles here and there, the album is the sort of record that could begin the building of a tremendous fanbase. Much like labelmates Champion, Blue Monday have obviously done their hardcore homework and it shows, both in their touring ethic and in their music. If you took some of the more exotic influences out of American Nightmare and replaced them with plenty of Negative Approach and youth crew sing-alongs, you'd probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of Blue Monday. The similarity in sound probably has at least a little to do with Dean Baltulonis' production, but the similarities are still rather striking, particularly in some of the guitar work in songs like "Let It Out" and "Drenched." The only place where they fall short of their aforementioned influences is in their lyrics, which are always passionate but rarely powerful. I found myself wondering if perhaps someone had gotten a thesaurus for Christmas. When a band can use words like "disenfranchised," "vehemently" and "euphemizes" but misspell "barely" every time, a red flag pops up in my head. Perhaps I'm off-base, but properly spelled and grammatically constructed lyrics seem more sincere than references to Vonnegut and Socrates. Bottom Line: The combination of straight-forward hardcore songwriting with clear-cut convictions, fantastic production and the occassional musical flourish, make this a probable must-have for any hardcore fan. Blue Monday are on their way to the top of the hardcore heap.