The three-year wait is over: new Justice For The Damned is coming May 8th. And it starts with 'Guidance From The Pain.'
For Greyscale Records' latest addition, Adelaide's Falcifer said that pain had a face on their latest EP and showed us it, yet their Sydney labelmates in Justice For The Damned see pain as being power. Out May 8th, 'Pain Is Power,' is going to be one of Australian heavy music's most anticipated records.
The first taste of this second LP, and it's opening song, is 'Guidance From The Pain.' A bitter, angry, heavy hardcore track about betrayal, karma, and how negative people will always follow, 'Guidance From The Pain' isn't half bad, beginning with a swell of tom hits and hive-buzzing guitars before it erupts.
The song's biggest strength is easily just how much clearer, how much more enunciated vocalist Bobak Rafiee is - you can tell he's really worked on his voice on the interim between now and 2017. It's also clear that Will Putney's know-how guiding the mix and mastering of this new record has created a cleaner yet nonetheless intense iteration of Justice's sound. Though I must say that when compared with the band's excellent 2019 single, 'No Brother, No Friend,' this newest track isn't quite as powerful and it doesn't really go anywhere either.
On top of this, for the second time in this band's career, we have another guest feature from Kublai Khan frontman, Matt Honeycutt; a short feature at the tail end of the song as the American vocalist bellows "Snake, I know the price you have to pay." However, compared to his energetic, bouncy vocal take back on 'Agony' from their debut album, 2017's 'Dragged Through The Dirt,' this part does feel lacking.
Still, this is but the first of ten new songs that'll make up the grueling, savage hardcore of 'Pain Is Power.' I fully expect bigger and better things to come! See JFTD and fans tear apart the tiny upstairs band room of the Burdekin Hotel for this track below:
