Review Summary: Hardcore these days is kinda fucking cool...
Only Constant is a potent display of pressure, chaos and rebellion. Trampling any notions of tough-guy posturing so pervasive in modern hardcore underfoot, this lean, mean, and uncompromisingly impactful listen grasps the notion of hardcore as a sound and shakes any and all associated pretence out with a vigorous judder, not stopping until the last drops of poser residue are wrung out between white-knuckle fists. The NJ outfit's first full length captures the high-energy spirit of their incendiary live performances across 10 fleeting but deliriously scrappy tracks, each one a reckless affront to the senses in the best possible way. Where it isn't crunching out gnarled riffs like a starved beast gnawing a splintered bone, it's gearing up for a pummelling assault that is guaranteed to clench jaws and send fists pumping. Offering the hard-line, uncompromising flavour that genre fans know and love, but with a dexterity of influence that doesn't detract from their boots-on-the-ground core sound, Gel blast their way through the hardcore playbook but never forget to impart their own sense of style; an extreme show of tumultuous energy undercut with influence from such likely suspects as powerviolence, thrash and grind. In many ways, Only Constant is a purveying of exaggerated purity in a genre that has become too reliant on image-based adulterants and macho bravado.
Distorted but tightly produced, Only Constant has a clear tone to its muddied anarchy that retains the hardcore aesthetic with groovy throughlines and virulent calls-to-arms that intensify and fester in equal measure. The DIY nature of the vibe is bolstered by the vocal provided by Sami Kaiser; a barbed mesh of purging retches, hoarse yelping, and piercing rattles. Punctuating grooves and soaring over the assaultive instrumentation, their abrasive, throaty straining complements the musical facets without overriding or becoming too woven in with the landscape. Instrumentally, the record exemplifies hardcore tropes in a punchy and filler-free way, structured for maximum brashness within the melodic interplay. Guitar-led whirlpools of bile and percussive passages, as found on cuts like 'Attainable' and 'Dicey', serve as rousing segues outwith the general scope of the wall-of-sound musicality, but always suit the aesthetic and consistently serve the main portions of the tracks on which they are featured, lithe as they are. The only reprieve from the violence comes via lo-fi interlude cut 'Calling Card', which serves as a brief intermission breaking up the rabble-rousing. Novel though it is, it feels appropriate, and the soundbytes therein serve as a fitting mission statement for the band's own values.
Although it occasionally flirts with hardcore offshoots such as crust and grind, and even incorporates an amount of traditional punk songwriting into its barrage, the release has a heart of straight hardcore. The application of such adjacent influence merges seamlessly with the unit's own no-frills brand of aggression, and lends diversity to a straight-faced yet remarkably fun record.'The Way Out', for example, eschews the grooves of yestertrack with a chunky, nasty onslaught of an intro that channels grind sensibilities with an undeniably heavy feel, but never gives way to its own dissonance. In finding such balance, Gel are able to keep one foot in the classic hardcore ideal, whilst still sealing the package with a personal sonic stamp. Lyrically, the record concerns a number of angsty topics such as social alienation, psychological trauma, familial ties and personal woes. These topics are cut from very much the same charred cloth as the music, in that they are blunt, serious and impactful. They reflect the album's brevity in their brusqueness, but also the calculated frenzy of the tone in their sharpness. Unsophisticated for the most part, they nonetheless occasionally exhibit a gutter profundity in their incisive statements, such as 'Composure''s decree of
'Imagine the peace that slips through the seams,
you watch it descend, into places unseen,
beyond your reach but,
in a pasture so green to be plucked up if you stretch inbetween'
Such asides are thoughtful and pepper the album, affording the content extra dimensionality that sits just below the surface, should listeners be so inclined to dig a little deeper. In this regard, it's heartening that the musical extremity and relative simplicity of the songwriting is not just a shallow display of pugnation to appease hardcore aficionados.
Only Constant does a great deal right in its short runtime. Its tight-lipped severity is backed up by an intelligence shown throughout the record, both in the fluxing contortion of the accepted punk sound and in the lyrical content, and the record feels exceptionally cohesive and individual in how it sets about its task. There is a sense of certain tracks concluding just as they're finding their flow and other moments where the sidesteps into adjacent subgenres feel a little token, but such moments are brief and do not hurt the shattering effect of the collection overall. It taps into all the best qualities that a hardcore record ought to, being digestible, suitably incensed and fully committed in its sense of purposeful rage. Gel have managed to deftly distil the individualism and chaos of their live sound, crafting an album that effortlessly encapsulates that indefinable feeling of glee as you scramble over multitudinous heads whilst distortion rings out from the stacked Marshalls in front of you and faceless goons desperately attempt to have their swinging fists make contact with your face. It boils for the full 16 minutes, without deviation or repetition, and its controlled, feverish mania gets the blood pumping and the fists clenching like only good hardcore can.
