Release Date: 02.19.08
In addition to being a former/current member of seminal outfits Lifetime and Kid Dynamite, Dan Yemin, lead singer of Philly hardcore brigade Paint it Black, is an honest-to-God, practicing with a diploma-on-the-wall psychologist, which, as one might imagine, flavors his lyrical tirades in cerebrally unusual ways. The quartet’s latest, New Lexicon, is, more or less, blast-furnace business as usual for the boys, save for the ace production work the tag-team of J. Robbins and Oktopus (of Dalek fame) have stamped on the proceedings. “So Much for Honor Among Thieves” and “Gravity Wins” emphasize the type of garrulous bottom-end squall not heard since the halcyon days of Bad Brains, yet manages not to forsake any of the band’s formidable melodic gifts (”The Ledge” and “Check Yr Math” especially) or furious internal combustion. The squelching electronic segues between songs sound oddly out of place on a record of this brevity, but they detract only mildly from what will undoubtedly go down as one of this year’s most sonically ferocious and socially conscious hardcore treatises.
