Chain of strength

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Chain of strength
General information
origin Pomona (United States)
Genre (s) Hardcore
founding 1988, 2012
resolution 1991
Current occupation
singing
Curt Canales
guitar
Ryan Hoffman
guitar
Paul "Frosty" Hertz
bass
Alejandro "Al Pain" Barreto
Drums
Chris Bratton

Chain of Strength is an American hardcore band from California that was active in the late 1980s and reformed in the 2010s. The members advocate the straight edge lifestyle.

history

The band was founded in Pomona in 1988 . The band members were between 15 and 18 years old at the time. Bassist Barreto had previously played drums with Inside Out . Guitarist Hoffman and drummer Bratton came from Justice League, who had already released an EP and two albums and whose repertoire included a song whose title was the name of the new band. Bratton played parallel on Inside Out and No For An Answer. The first live appearance of Chain of Strength took place on site as part of a concert with Youth of Today and Bold in front of over 1000 spectators. After releasing their first EP True Till Death on Revelation Records in 1989, the band founded their own label for further publications, Foundation Records, on the 1990 chain of strength EP What Holds Us Apart and an EP from their friends from California Hardcore band End To End was released. The band played all over the USA and Canada and especially in the hardcore strongholds on the US East Coast (so regularly in the CBGB in New York and in the Safari Club in Washington), but never made it to a tour outside of North America. Chain of Strength was not without controversy in the scene. On the one hand, they did not adapt to the more martial-looking outfit of contemporary straight-edge bands, but wore fashionable everyday clothes on stage, which earned them the nickname "New Kids on the Block" (after the boy group of the same name ). In this regard, the design magazine Harsh Forms called them “hardcore hipsters”. Furthermore, they offended the often dogmatic straight edge scene, as they admitted in interviews that they "occasionally" consume alcohol, which contradicted the lyrics of the band, in which the inner radicalization of the scene was encouraged. In particular, with the Gorilla Biscuits and No-For-An-Answer singer Dan O'Mahony developed a longstanding hostility. In 1991 the band separated because work or school as well as obligations in other bands could no longer be reconciled with everyday band life.

Singer Canales and guitarist Hoffman founded the hardcore band Circle Storm after the end of Chain of Strength and a professional break, which released an EP and an album on Ambassador Records. Drummer Bratton switched to Wool, guitarist Hertz to Man Will Surrender. Bassist Barreto played bass with Alien Ant Farm from 2006 to 2008 and guitar with the reformed crossover band Excel since 2012 .

In 2010 the US hardcore label 1124 Records released the tribute sampler To Us It Was So Much More , on which ten bands (including The Geeks ) cover tracks from Chain of Strength.

In 2012, Chain of Strength reformed in their original line-up. The occasion was the 25th anniversary of Revelation Records , which organized a festival in New York for this anniversary , with Chain of Strength as its headliner . Since then the band has appeared sporadically without producing any new material. In addition to local concerts, the band also performed at festivals such as the Amnesia Rockfest in Montreal in 2014 and the Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin in 2015 as well as headlining the Rain Fest in Seattle .

Style and reception

The Canadian lifestyle magazine Vice named the first chain-of-strength EP True Till Death the best straight edge hardcore EP of all time. It makes the concept of this genre of music understandable to outsiders. The Ox fanzine called the band's two EPs “classics”, which contained “a lot of unbridled energy”. The online magazine Punknews sees the band's music as "stunning, (...) unyielding" hardcore, which had a lasting impact on subsequent straight-edge bands of the 1990s such as Ten Yard Fight or In My Eyes ; Canales' singing style in particular was often copied. The magazine criticizes the band's lyrics as generic. The music magazine Scene Point Blank judged the album The One Thing That Still Holds True that it offered a “non-stop bombardment” of classic youth crew hardcore, which is a classic and emblematic of the late straight edge hardcore era 1980s was; In particular, the title True Till Death is a straight-edge anthem on the level of titles by Minor Threat . According to Scene Point Blank, some of the band's songs convey elements of rock 'n' roll . The magazine Sputnik Music described the band's music as classic hardcore in the style of bands like Youth of Today, Sick of It All or Minor Threat, which, a unique selling point, is enriched with “clear emotional elements” and appears refreshing and authentic. Andrew Neufeld from Comeback Kid and Matt Fox from Shai Hulud refer to Chain of Strength as musical role models for their respective bands.

Drummer Bratton describes the hardcore bands Cro-Mags and SSD as stylistic models of Chain of Strength, singer Canales the bands DYS , 7 Seconds , SSD, Minor Threat and Dag Nasty .

Discography

  • 1989: True Till Death ( EP , Revelation Records )
  • 1990: What Holds Us Apart (EP, Foundation Records)
  • 1995: The One Thing That Still Holds True ( compilation , Revelation Records)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Vice.com: The first interview with Chain Of Strength in 20 years is mainly about clothes. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  2. HarshForms.com: Green, White and Black: Chain of Strength's Colors. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  3. Ingo Taler: Out of Step: Hardcore-Punk between rollback and neo-Nazi adaptation . Unrast, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-89771-821-0 , p. 71 .
  4. Bare Bones Hardcore: Interview Chain of Strength. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  5. ^ StraightandAlert.com: Chain of Strength - Interview. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  6. ^ Punknews.org: Chain of Strength reuniting for Revelation 25 in New York City. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  7. ^ Joachim Hiller: Chain of Strength - The One Thing That Still Holds True . In: Ox-Fanzine . No. 24, 1996.
  8. ^ Punknews.org: Chain of Strength: The One Thing That Still Holds True. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  9. ScenePointBlank.com: Chain of Strength: The One Thing That Still Holds True. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  10. SputnikMusic.com: Chain of Strength. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  11. BurnYourEars.de: Comeback Kid - Interview with guitarist Andrew Neufeld. Retrieved December 19, 2017 .
  12. ^ Punknews.org: Matt Fox (Shai Hulud). Retrieved December 19, 2017 .