Customer Reviews

Lions in This Game

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is some pureness, it makes me glad. It will get you hyped, there isn't way too much to it and if that bothers you, well go ahead and jack off to your Low albums...

If you're a fan of straight-up, old-school hardcore with no slip-ups, then you will totally dig this record. Donnybrook is one of those bands who know how to write songs with attitude. You can't help but feel like a badass when you're listening to this album - it's full of well thought lyrics, fast riffs, and crushing breakdowns. And the album's sound...wow. It has this warm, full sound, like it was recorded in the perfect room. There's even faint hints of rock and blues riffs in some songs, making the band sound like their own throughout the entire record. This is a must-have for any hardcore fan's collection, because it reminds us how classic hardcore is really done. Top songs include "Read 'em and Weep", "Check Your Chest", "Down for the Core", and "Techno-Logic Kill".

this album is great. its in your face hardcore thats full of variety, breakdowns, and yeah... pretty much what the guy before me said.

its a great all around hardcore album. if youre down for the core, you should already have this.

this cd is straight up no nonsense hardcore. good breakdowns, and good 2-step parts. kinda sounds like terror, only a tad less heavey, but still, there better than terror. great band. buy this cd.

So many hardcore bands, so little time; this is the dilemma Forced Coitus is faced with on a daily basis. Being the avid music fans that we are, we enjoy seeking out new and interesting bands of all styles from all areas of the globe, and if they are worthy, Forced Coitus will certainly support them. Yes, this even includes hardcore bands, as difficult as that is to believe. We at Forced Coitus are not out to get all hardcore bands that exist, as we are perfectly willing to admit to liking bands such as Blood for Blood, 100 Demons, and Ringworm (just their new album, however). But we feel those truly atrocious bands, whether they are hardcore, death metal, black metal, nu-metal, etc. need to be ridiculed as much as possible. We are hardly to blame for the fact that 90% of hardcore bands are deserving of such treatment. Faithful readers will rarely hear us ranting about black or power metal because, quite frankly, they are made fun of already (and rightfully so). Artists in those genres generally take themselves way too seriously, are people like ourselves delight in making fun of them while enjoying their music. With hardcore, there are far too few people who poke at its faults, choosing to take it way too seriously, believing that hardcore is a "movement" or "positive force," rather than just a style of music.

Several days ago, a close friend of the Forced Coitus clan told us about a particular song by the hardcore band Donnybrook. Of course, we had heard of the band before, but after sampling some songs off of Lions in this Game, we decided Donnybrook would be a band not to follow due to their overwhelming homosexuality. However, we were informed about the lyrics to a song they wrote called 'Techno-Logic-Kill,' and were intrigued to learn that the lyrics were about us! Well, not to take too much credit, as the lyrics were about us and people like us, this is to say people who talk s**t on the internet (we really don't call it talking s**t as much as bringing enlightenment to misguided fools). So we read the lyrics and took them into consideration, then read the rest of the lyrics on the album and took them into consideration, and then we realized that this was Donnybrook, a hardcore band of such anonymity that nobody really cares about them. However, we at Forced Coitus have made it our duty to critique some of the lyrics from Lion in this Game.

One might wonder why we even bother to take this band seriously at all. With titles such as 'House of Rage,' 'Fist Over Fist,' 'Purify,' and the absurdly titled 'Down for the Core,' Donnybrook certainly does not stand out from the hundreds of other s**tty hardcore acts stinking up the USA, and we are certainly not surprised at how little people care for them. But the song 'Techno-Logic-Kill' has some hilarious lyrics. Take this one for instance:

"Tech No Logic Kill! I'm sick of the fighting this is all your fault."*

Don't you see the beauty of the lyrics? They have "Tech," as in Technology, then they have "No Logic," which means that we have no clue what we're talking about, and they sum it all up with "Kill," which is defined as "to put to death or deprive of life." We really love how Donnybrook most likely consider themselves very mature intelligent, and their whole argument is reduced to saying, "this is all your fault." First of all, what is all our fault? Second, you sound like a whiney 5 year old that has just had his favorite toy broken. Jesus H. Christ, we seriously cannot believe hardcore has come to this. Donnybrook takes all the cheesy platitudes of all hardcore bands and turns them into the worst (or best, depending on how you look at it) parody of the genre we have ever seen. We at Forced Coitus truly do not believe we could do a better job mocking hardcore than Donnybrook has already done.

What it all comes down to is symbolism over substance. The hardcore genre is nothing other than a series of catch phrases and sing along choruses to lull unsuspecting and gullible youths into believing the most ridiculous lies known to man. That is all they have going for them, since they know that logic would completely blow away everything they have "worked" for. One particular teenager proved this when he went through a point by point rebuttal of our rant, 'F**k Colin of Arabia Up the Ass! This youth used the ABC format, only he decided to go, "A, B1, B2, C" just so he could say, "C is for Colin." Needless to say, Forced Coitus wrote him back and tore his argument apart with all the ease of a Joe Satriani album. Surely he thought that no one would notice, but he was dead wrong. He had no point to make, so he thought he could sound cool and smart by writing a quick little catch phrase.

Sadly, Donnybrook is not content to complain about us in just 'Techno-Logic-Kill.' Indeed, they make stabs at us throughout the entire album, or at least it would seem so. Whoever they are talking about is vague, and we are left to assume who it is the singer is referring to, which is quite common is most hardcore nowadays. For instance, in the song 'The Iron Jaws of Angles' he says, "Not content with the current state of anything or anyone. You're only here to complain and ruin others fun," and in 'House of Rage' the author whines, "You may not like us but we don't care! Just leave your bulls**t at the door." But Forced Coitus was also really surprised at some of the homoerotic lyrics that were to be found on Lions in this Game. In the comically titled song 'Down for the Core' we find that the singer's, "love will never fade" and that it is " still burning strong since the first day." And who could forget the ode to the gay man with the lyrics, "You can't really think you're on top. The s**t goes down and all you do is talk. As soon as a body hits the floor you want to jump in the mix." Could we make our point any clearer?

Lions in this Game is certainly no masterpiece, and does not even pass as being tolerable. Eventually we plan on burning a copy from a friend so we can give it another listen and laugh at how intolerably boring it is. The vocalist certainly is going out on a limb when he says, "No clichés, no gimmicks here," since the album is filled with nothing but clichés and gimmicks. This is hardcore through and through, following every step in the hardcore book, matching every formula set by bands that came years before and still didn't do it much better than how Donnybrook is doing it now. If the singer of Donnybrook were to read this (which he won't, no doubt), we would have one piece of advice to give: don't write songs about us! The very fact that Donnybrook writes songs about people on the internet talking s**t just fuels our fire, and makes us realize we really are accomplishing something in this f**ked up world. Too bad they don't realize that, because it gives us a good laugh. How can one not laugh at a band who uses the lyrics "we're lions in this game you can never silence our style" in the opening song? Forced Coitus is very proud to openly say, "Donnybrook, you silenced your style all by yourselves."

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