Ah, Eurocore! The wonderul sub-genre of European hardcore, usually consisting of bands who pretend to be ‘street’ and from New York City, while they are actually from a small town on the European countryside. This doesn’t have to be something bad, but it usually makes me frown or sigh in a tired manner. Since both bands featured here can be described as Eurocore, and I got both their albums on one CD, I’ll combine the reviews for both of them, even though I strongly suspect that these are two separate releases.

“Never Accept Defeat’ has been released to celebrate the ten year anniversary of Only Attitude Counts, and things like this are always a good reason for a small party. OAC comes from Austria, but they sound so NYHC that I actually expect to find Vinnie Stigma and Freddy Madball in the songwriting credits. The band plays fast hardcore in the exact same vein as Madball or Agnostic Front, and combine this with a tough guy attitude (‘fucking fake’-this, ‘fucking faggot’-that). That does not impress me. There should be five songs on the OAC-part of this disc, but for some reason the opening song ‘Spiritual Path’ appears twice on my (promo) copy.

Fans of aforementioned bands and other Eurocore like Ryker’s or Backfire may like this, but all this EP makes ME do is long for my Terror CD.

Out Of Reach is one of the seemingly million hardcore bands that populate the part of Belgium known as Flanders. The Belgians merge speedy straight-up hardcore and mid-tempo moshy bits into something that sounds like their own thing. The songs vary from superfast (‘Youth Of Today’) to chugga-chugga double bass metal (‘Broken Trust’) and almost everything you can possibly think of in between.

Singer Yves has a gruff voice that’s a bit generic, but he never sounds boring. The production is OK for a true independent release, and I like the snappy sound of the bass guitar and the snare drum a lot. I prefer the slower, metallic sounding songs and parts Out Of Reach come up with, but the band’s style is broad enough to appeal to a large number of people. No lyrics or artwork, for both releases, by the way, so I can’t say anything about that.