Missing out on my guest pass for The Chiodos Bros. And Greyfield concert to go to a party (actually, I couldn't find a ride up to Columbus), I decided to go to a party, where No Ninja was at. They went through the house handing out stickers and Cds, and I got to reviewing this disc as a result of it. The recording on this disc is absolutely brutal, with a general sound not unlike someone trying to recording in their bathroom. Still, I look back to some of the tape demos I received in 1999 and I still marvel about how clear this disc is to some of their tapes. True to their title, they are avery melodic hardcore band that does not fall into the trap that many hardcore bands find themselves in: that they have the intent of moving from a heart-wrenching sound to brutal, screamed-out hardcore. These hardcore bands go much too far beyond anything resembling hardcore, and create a mucky-sounding metal band. Long-winded I am, but the previous point was to illustrate that No Ninja always keeps the delicate balance of brutal guitars and emotional, heart-felt lyrics

Threading through their music very political lyrics, No Ninja begins off their demo CD with "Embroidered Authority", which has such lyrical gems as "Smash Authority, Take Back Your Rights". The screamed-out vocals of the lead singer can provide a minor challenge in later deciphering, but listeners will have a pleasant surprise awaiting them if they pay the utmost attention. The stream-of-consciousness beginning to "Mascarafacde" rapidly degenerates into a high-powered vocal assault, as the lead rapidly gets more angry, realizing "the pain you put me through". While No Ninja's music is created at the crux of emotional invovlement, some of the music that accompanies their lyrics feels as if it needs a minor tune-up. "Mascarafacade" has a very vocal move to distortion on the guitars, with the effect that one can actually imagine the guitarist stepping on the distortion pedal. Whether it is a purposeful thing or not, one's attention is drawn from the lyrics for just long enough that one might lose a valuable thought.

As I've always said, three song EPs are probably the hardest thing for a reviewer to well, review. Most bands' discs will clock in at under 15 minutes, so the reviewer has to focus their attention on a small number of tracks that may not necessarily be the strongest of any given bands' corpus. Still, I feel confident that what I am hearing from No Ninja is their A-list material. They end the CD wonderfully with "The Sun Never Sets", its title allusory for the popular axiom "The Sun Never Sets on the British empire.". Starting off with churning guitar lines which rapidly deteriorate into morse code signals, lyrics like "God bless the USA/to liberate your country from yourselves" provide further comparison to the British empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. No Ninja will admittedly turn away a lot of potential listeners by just trying to play this style of metal-infused hardcore, but they do hardcore better than a majority of the bands out there currently, and incorporate politics into their music without trying to hide it.

Top Track : The Sun Never Sets

Rating : 7.1/10