Here we go with some run of the mill 'Hardcore 101' brought to us courtesy of  Long Island's own Soldiers. It's highly likely that it doesn't make a difference what part of New York you or your band is from, but whatever the case may be, Soldiers debut release, 'End of Days', falls flat and fails to make any kind of favorable impression.

Their structure and songwriting on their album is quite possibly the simplest form of hardcore music, period. There is a slight metallic edge to it, but it's nowhere near as aggressive as that of Hatebreed, Bury Your Dead, or a multitude of other bands that have come out within the past ten years, that in some form or fashion, all pretty much sound the same. It's time to find a new direction, and young bands like this should be the ones leading the charge, as opposed to trying to take it back to 1990. It's reminiscent of the bullshit 'Thrash Revival' that's going on in Metal right now, and just as annoying.

It's rather unfortunate when young bands like these don't dare to bring anything new to the table. It's one thing to pay homage to influences, and it's hard not to wear those influences on your sleeve to a large degree, especially on a first album........but to come off sounding exactly like the bands that influenced you is rather lame. And also provides great cover for a lack of creativity.

To make matters worse, they actually attempted to cut a 'hip hop' song at the end of their record (bonus track). As if the predictable hardcore wasn't bad enough, they stepped outside the circle, and went for a 'rap' session. Terrible! And not so much because of the fact that it's rap, but simply because they're not good at it. Were they to learn to put out some true quality hardcore first, then chances are they'd be able to focus on that as a side project or something. The most important thing as a young band should be to get your Main project situated and established first. Then go off and do whatever it is that you always wanted to do on the side.

What it comes down to is this......this album is really only for the most Diehard fans of the genre, and moreso of the band. For anyone else, I'd definitely recommending picking up something else.