Time Signature What makes us rock...

Genre: hardcore / alternative metal

This is a damn great harcore/metal album. I mean when an album starts out with a guy yelling "It's the state of the world address, motherf******************************ckers!", then you know that things are going to be good.

And things are good. This album has everything that an urbancore, or streetcore, or whatever that type of hardcore music could be called. It's got plenty of polka drums, simple hardcore punky riffs, heavy riffage, plenty of "Yo, this is..." and "f*ck you" statements, angrily yelled vocals and soccer match choruses.

Notable tracks are the strangely melodic "What Makes Us Tick" which contains a great mosh-friendly heavy outro-riff, and the tough-guy life-on-the-streets-anthems "Tales from the Hard Side" and "How it Is", which is a collaboration with none other than Cypress Hill, thus combining metal and rap music (and this was before Nü Metal). Actually, "How it Is" was somewhat of a hit back in the day, and that's no coincidence - it's heavy, simple, melodic and catchy (it's virtually impossible not scream along to the "That's how it is, yo, that's how it is"-chorus. "Five Blocks to the Subeay" is another rap-meets-metal life-on-the-streets-anthem (this time with Biohazard doing the rapping themselves), and it's another great moshpit-friendly rocker. "failed Territory" has a nice dark and epic classical 2-minute intro while "Love Denied" has a piano-and-epic-reverbed-guitar intro.

The gritty socially aware lyrics suit the generally hardcore and moshing oriented riffing very well.

I think this album will appeals to fans of hardcore and crossover thrash alike as well as fans of Nü Metal (if they can live with guitar solos, that is) and people who just like to mosh.