Album Review: 30 Miles - 'The Smiles Of Rage & Paranoia'

How many Italian melodic hardcore groups feature in your record collection currently? No one will be surprised if your answer is "not many." It is not after all the region known for this genre.

30 Miles could change that however with their new full length 'The Smiles Of Rage & Paranoia,' their unique take on the genre which melds mathcore ideas and intensity in with the punk rock/hardcore you know and love.

Kicking off with the record's title track, 30 Miles set the pace early with aggressive drums and piercing guitars, all smoothed off with some sweet, melody heavy vocals. These however quickly take an attack stance with the rest of the band as the group power through the track incorporating plenty of stops and changes to keep things interesting. The pace slows down for 'Dancing In Her Eyes' as classic rock influences creep in for a lighter tone than the opener before Jezebel & The Clown, a song about a girl and her favourite clown set to music that is sometimes fun and sometimes creepy, just like real clowns.

The mid section of the record becomes a little muddled as the group fail to give their tones too much diversity, this is until the acoustic opener 'Nightlife', which really just exemplifies how necessary some tonal variety is when followed by the completely acoustic 'Miss Anthropy'. An album highlight is the energy fuelled 'Here I Am', which is fairly straight forward by this group's standards but combines the melodic elements with brash punk rock in a seamless way.

Things close off with some metal riff attempts in the fast paced 'LSD', and a track listed as "instrumental crazy track", which is actually just a complete waste of time. Stop at track ten.

Italian melodic hardcore bands, who would've thunk it? 30 Miles are doing their best to make the genre as interesting as possible and are nearly there, with a little bit more sound variety these guys would be on a winner. There are no problems with their song writing and structuring abilities and it will be very interesting to see where they take things next.

1. The Smiles Of Rage & Paranoia

2. Dancing In Her Eyes

3. Jezebel & The Clown

4. My Mind Don't Mind

5. Monique

6. Nightlife

7. Miss Anthropy

8. Last Day Before Me & You In Amsterdam

9. Here I Am

10. LSD

11. (Landed).