Work takes us all to a dark place. We wake up before our bodies are ready, force-feed, put on a uniform and then commute. This gets mistaken for an average responsible adult’s daily routine when in reality it’s coercion of capital. Confined to a space for 40+ hours a week for no other reason than to make enough money to keep your fucking lights on. It’s an absolute farce, and the only way to escape the monotonous reality that has become your life is to sneak off into your work place bathroom (likely covered the in fecal matter of your co-workers) and stare hopelessly into your little pocket screen that has somehow come to validate your very existence. As you scroll, you think of your friends from college/high school/wherever and wonder why you were too stubborn to sellout and join them in the corporate workforce? Remember your friend Trevor? Yeah, the two of you used to have a blast going to shows and watching new bands play. The only problem is that Trevor never actually took the time to read the lyrics to all his favorite bands and ended up taking a high end job in New York. Not only does he now wear designer clothing, he also didn’t want to go see Eyehategod in Brooklyn when you flew halfway across the country to visit him last year, instead you went to a “Modern American Eatery” and overpaid for well cocktails. What a fucking sellout poser! Despite his poser sellout yuppie tendencies, you resent his stability. In a weird way, you wish you had put all your time and energy into learning a marketable skill instead of just reading Marx and relentlessly practicing your instruments. You can’t go back now. You’ve dug your own grave and the soil isn’t getting any softer. “If only there were an album that so beautifully captured the experience of trying to do something commendable for a living only to be met with immense suffering and frustrating!” you belt out. As those beautifully composed words leave your lips it becomes all too clear…You’ve once again mistaken the CVLT Nation WordPress tab on you computer for your goddamn diary.
Despite this mistake you check your spam folder only to find that you somehow managed to get a hold of Baptists’ new album Beacon Of Faith. Preferably, you’ll need to find some nice things to say about it other than the cliche “it fucking rips faces off” type of statements so many heavy music blogs and websites cling to in a desperate attempt for clicks. For starters, I think its worth noting that lyrically, Baptists throat man Andrew Drury channeled a lot of daily frustrations from working in social services to dealing with asshole neighbors on this album. Beacon Of Faith is not just another metallic-hardcore record where the vocals act as another instrument or sound in the mix, it is a refreshingly compassionate take on the harrowing ways in which humans care for society’s most vulnerable accompanied by ferocious riffs, drum fills, and bass lines.
Out now on Southern Lord
Beacon Of Faith is a masterpiece of all things fast, heavy and technical. Everything from Converge (Kurt Ballou mixed and did guest vocals on this record FYI) to His Here Is Gone can be heard in this record and its most technical moments never overshadow the punk ethos this band brings to the table. Far too often bands put themselves together around a certain image or lifestyle that they never really lived and its absolutely cringe-worthy. No one is gonna believe fucking Jacob and Bradley from the suburbs are hard with their face tattoos, Nails beanies and skateboards while they write pop punk lyrics over deathcore breakdowns. With Baptists, what you see and hear is what you get. This is not just another group of dudes who play metal and hardcore well. This is a group of dudes who grew up skating (and still make homemade skate videos), living for punk, and most importantly, have never worn designer jeans or turned down going to see Eyehategod (unlike fucking Trevor’s yuppie ass).
As a band, Baptists have accomplished more than most people who pick up an instrument ever will. As people, they’ve overcome difficult day jobs, having families, living in separate cities, Andrew’s growing acting career, and juggling multiple projects. While they may seem like average hesh dudes on the outside, these are some incredibly driven humans, and collectively they have brought forth and restored the Beacon Of Faith back to metallic-hardcore.
Baptists, (from left) Sean Hawryluk, Andrew Drury, Danny Marshall and Nick Yacyshyn, photograph by Ryan Walter Wagner.
In case you’ve never seen what this band is capable of see below.
