Record of the Week: Crucified Class: S/T 7"

Crucified Class: S/T 7” (Whispers in Darkness Records) We named Crucified Class’s previous cassette Record of the Week, and now the band has returned with their debut vinyl. Guess what? We still love it. While it seems like an obvious comparison given Crucified Class is from Portland, there really is a lot of Poison Idea in their sound. Rather than the pared down, Pick Your King version of P.I., though, Crucified Class pulls more from the War All the Time / Feel the Darkness era that fused the earlier material’s intensity to longer, more well-developed songs with dynamic dual-guitar arrangements. I think there’s also a lot of Adolescents in Crucified Class’s sound: the insanely catchy guitar hooks, certainly, but also the darker chord progressions and the way the songs build tension in elegant, interesting ways (“System Sickness” reminds me of “Kids of the Black Hole” in that regard). While Crucified Class is 100% a hardcore punk band, their songwriting feels ambitious, which stands in stark contrast to the tossed-off feeling of a lot of contemporary DIY hardcore. That ambition pays off, with these four songs rising well above mere imitations of the classics.