Album Review: Confused - Riot
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
It’s been more than fifteen years since the Thrash revival which brought a whole new generation of bands to the fore, showing their appreciate and influence of the seminal bands from back in the 1980s. Regardless of how good some of those bands were, and how raucous their live shows turned out to be, there was always something of the sequel about them – something perhaps a little remakey.
We who are old enough to have been around when those Bay Area and New York bands captured lightning in a bottle back in the day recall a time when excessive speed and a party attitude was a musical prerequisite. Your humble scribe remembers the first time he heard Anthrax, and then seeing the Hell Awaits promo on The Power Hour, thinking it was the heaviest thing imaginable.
That the youngsters were never fully able to capture the magic, leaves it up to the old guard to show them how it’s done. I don’t think it’s unfair to say Texas’ Confused were never blessed with widespread media coverage back in the day. Having formed in 1988 and emerging from the Rio Grande Valley, main man and primary songwriter, Al Del Barrio drew his influences from the likes of M.O.D., D.R.I and the New York Hardcore scene.
Thrash was always a liminal space where Punk, Hardcore and Metal met and Confused’s latest album - the aptly titled: Riot – revels in the freedoms afforded it by embracing the punk chaos while, simultaneously serving up thick slices of metal riffery.
A quick glance down the track-listing is enough to show Confused aren’t messing around. Even before you’ve pressed play you’ll have a fair idea of what Chaos, Riot, Anger Issues and Fight are all about. Opener Chaos wastes no time in introducing itself in a chug-a-chug stomping riff and a meaty guitar, while follow up Riot follows a similar path, with perhaps a little more Crossover evident.
Now that Riot has eased you in and made you feel at home, it goes all Patrick Bateman on you and launches into its frenzied manifesto of blitzkrieg drumming, howling guitars and thick bass.
Each track is a couple of minutes of infectious thrashing hardcore, straight out of the Billy Milano playbook. Grains and Greedy SOB take no prisoners, delivering unbelievably catchy interludes amid the ensuing pandemonium.
Love, Lies and Murder sounds like a collaboration between Agnostic Front and Anthrax, complete with a huge drum sound and gang vocals complementing a deceptively simplistic riff. It Means Nothing and Never Forgotten are the kind of tunes that send hundreds of people over barriers and in a world seemingly having lost its way, Our Flag wears its heart on its sleeve.
Take a Bath is Confused’s Hang the Pope, while I Want a Beer is unlikely to be adopted by the Betty Ford Clinic, but is a stone-cold pit-filler. In Dead Man Walking and Hate in Me, Riot returns to the more mid-paced thrash-centric sound of the album’s openers and after the tornado that has just happened it comes as something of a relief. Which just leaves I Love Hardcore to round things off in a wave of killer guitar and more than a little groove.
Loud and angry, Riot is an onslaught of a record, filled to bursting with aggressive tunes and barbed hooks that never once allows its tempo to drop below the redline for the thirty-four-minute duration. It is the sort of album that makes those of us of a certain age teary-eyed with nostalgia and wondering whether they still sell those white high-top trainers. Though I think it should feature a warning label that reads: “Caution – Joining a circle-pit in your fifties is detrimental to your health.” Oh, and watch those Achilles Tendons.
