Band: Today Forever
Album title: Profound Measures
Label: Bastardized Recordings
Distributor: Suburban - Bertus
Release date: 17/04/2009
Release: CD

Although this Kassel based German Hardore act is only at its 2nd full-length (debut album The New Pathetic was released through Strike First in Europe), their activities sheet shows an excess of 200 gigs (including a 5-week trip in the States to promote the release of the album through US label Faceless Records), and if their debut was anything like this sophomore album, that is hardly a surprize!

Because the Kassel quintet (composed of singer Christian, guitarists Dave and Manuel, bassist Marco, and drummer Tim) deliver a highly catchy New school Hardcore with elements from Emo and Metal, giving the whole a hymnlike capacity with nice sing-along vocal backings (which come from all other band members barring the drummer). Feeling the time was ripe to take a next step up the corporate ladder of the music bizz, the band singed to Bastardized Recordings in the fall of last year, They then went down the Kohlekeller Studio (which has in recent days seen such interesting albums from the likes of Final Prayer, Six Reasons To Kill, and The Blackout Argument being recorded there)to lay down the music of their new music. Not having heaard their debut album, I’ll have to asume the promo talk of the label is acurate in saying that the guys still play their “…energized tempo of musical abrasiveness with breakdowns and Mosh…”, but also that “…the hymn factor has been expanded without constraint…”. According to the label, the band has hightened the “Pop” appeal of their music, setting “…weighty contrasts in the form of wild scream attacks and brutal Hardcore breakdowns…”! Well, what I can hear on the album’s 14 certainly applies to this! Also according to the label, the broad and dynamically varying arrangement of the new tracks should expand the number of potential listeners to include fans of the likes of Comeback Kid, Snapcase, Unbroken, Silverstein, Fall Out Boy, or Underoath. With the band itself calling the likes of Shai Hulud, Unbroken, the Beloved, Hopesfall, Strongarm, and Snapcase as their main influences, I can certainly see the connection…can you?

Check out a couple of songs (2 off the debut, only one off the new album when I last looked, two other new tracks not being available at that time) at myspace.com/todayforever, where you can also view of the two videos which the band recorded to put on the album as a multi-media bonus! Nice stuff!

90/100

Tony.