No Innocent Victim
Tipping The Scales
Victory
Perhaps I wasn’t listening too closely the first time ‘round (their Flesh And Blood debut), but never had I fancied No Innocent Victim capable of such an overwhelming heavyosity previous to this. Well, color me stoked beyond belief, along comes Tipping The Scales to knock my dick into the dirt. And really, the dirt is precisely where No Innocent Victim reside on their second full-length installment. Belying any potential they’d have to play the sunny-side-up hardcore characteristic of their native California, NIV exhibit such a crusty, caustic, cantankerous maw of a hardcore that Discharge comparisons are not only dead-on accurate, they’re damn near moot. Sure, such a Dis-course has been beyond-irrelevant for well over a decade now, but the last thing you’d expect from the Victory camp is one of their bands integrating influence from thee gods of crustcore into their sound, let alone retaining some semblance of originality in the process. And, yeah, in the grand scheme of hardcore, Tipping The Scales would hardly be considered the epitome of “originality,” but what the album lacks in that department, it more than compensates for in sheer gritty, filth-encrusted execution • and at 11 songs in 22 minutes (you do the math), NIV make their (very bludgeoning) point clear, leaving you to ponder why you’re writhing in the gravel in the first place. Considered the scales now tipped.
Victory, PO Box 146546, Chicago, IL 60614; http://www.victoryrecords.com
