Combat Crisis

"Combat Crisis play intense, in-your-face street punk with lots of hardcore influence and a ton of melodic gang vocals. Their new album "Face The Crowd" sees the band crush the pedal-to-the-floor in all songs, while firing off lots of cool riffs and a couple of excellent choruses in the process - kind of like The Casualties but more hardcore punk." - Rockfreaks.net

"Hardcore street punk apparently didn’t curl up and die. It was just dormant until these guys decided to wake it up. Face the Crowd is chock full of buzzing chainsaw guitars and guttural, screaming vocals accompanied with some youth crew style choruses. It’s full of nice little leads and licks to get your fist pumping to the anthems. Although not anything new, these guys bring some fresh blood to the scene." - Origivation Magazine

"Holy shit! How have I never heard these dudes before? Female fronted, brutal as shit street punk. It was obvious the majority of the crowd was there for them, as they had the biggest pit all night (although quite honestly, all the bands had people going apeshit). The vocals reminded me a lot of F-Minus, and if they come around your area, check them out. I definitely was made a fan that night." - Battle of the Midwestern Housewives

Combat Crisis’s first album opens with the anthem “We Represent” and lets the listener know right out of the gate what the band is all about. Lyrics like “The price that they pay is the blood we will spray” coupled with the backbeat obviously influenced by Until We Die-era A Global Threat set the tone for the rest of the record. The song breaks the pace with an oi inspired guitar solo before running back into the breakneck streetpunk pace and continuing on into the second track, “D.T.T.R”. “D.T.T.R.” maintains the style set up with the album’s opener, as do the rest of the tracks on the album. Though the style is limited to a very PunkCore/Rodent Popsicle Records sound, the album is fleshed out well and keeps the energy high.

“World Won’t Wait” starts out slow with a tough but simple lead guitar riff that sounds like a lost track from the legendary Last Resort. The follow-up, “Fool Me Twice” consists of eerily familiar chord progressions and a simple guitar lead that breaks up the basic verse-chorus-verse song structure. The band’s mantra, “Combat Crisis”, is very, very close to the Casualties’ track “On the Front Line”, and the song structure (much like the Casualties song) is simple and stays basically the same throughout. The simplistic structure lends credibility to the lyrical focus of the song. This is when the band is really able to merge their statements conceptually with their music. Their stances against racism and homophobia may seem “progressive” to some, but are viewed by members of the band as basic ideas that every human should be able to understand. It’s fitting that they don’t try to fit such basic concepts into lofty, artsy, absurd music. This music works because it’s accessible to average teenage kids, the people who need to hear messages about these things.

The album is well-produced, and every element of the band’s sound is balanced and easy to hear. The guitar tone is thick enough for the style without coming out too distorted. The bass cuts through with the mids pushed up, but doesn’t get that clunky sound some streetpunk bands tend conjure up when going for a similar tone. The lead guitar work is simple but mostly effective. The lead intro in “40CC’s” is a simple rock n roll shuffle that a lot of oi bands borrow from, but it works in the song and is a welcome distraction to barrage of power chords and drum rolls that open most of the tracks. “Misled” also has a well done lead guitar intro that is doubled over as a break between the choruses and verses that’s merely some simple metal-tinged shredding buried behind a thick wah effect. The solo during the break down in that song continues with a more metallic theme, but is well done; if being incredibly simple.

The vocals aren’t annoying, but aren’t really anything special. There isn’t much range to style, as lead vocalist Elisha Cause tends to take most of her cues from the likes of Final Conflict and the Unseen. She lacks the uniqueness of other punk front women that have cultivated a style of their own, such as Tatti of Lost World/Endrophobia or Amyl of Imperial Leather. The vocals aren’t bad and don’t distract from the more positive elements of the band, but they don’t seem to offer much on their own.

Face the Crowd is a solid debut for Combat Crisis. This record isn’t going to break down any walls musically or lyrically, but for an album in this genre it works on almost every level. The attitude and intensity is kept up for the entire running time, and this is a case where a streetpunk band has succeeded in writing a great album rather than just a collection of songs that would probably work better as four 7?s. - Review You