Run With The Hunted - Run With The Hunted

Run With The Hunted
Run With The Hunted
Panic; 2010

I would never claim to have a firm opin­ion or be an exhaus­tive resource about hard­core music, but I do know what I like and can tell you why. I didn’t grow up around any­one who lis­tened to bands from this (or any related) genre, and my first real expo­sure to it was in col­lege when I hap­pened across a copy of Where Blood And Fire Bring Rest by Zao. From that dis­cov­ery, I moved through a slew of hard­core, metal, and post­core acts, and attended as many local shows fea­tur­ing such music as I could. I’m always on the look­out for bands of this nature that are engag­ing and inter­est­ing, so it pleases me to declare that the debut self-​titled full-​length from Ari­zona boys Run With The Hunted is a wel­come addi­tion this time-​honored (and often mis­un­der­stood) milieu.

This eleven-​song affair is rife with the sort of anger, aggres­sion, and con­fu­sion regard­ing the cur­rent state of the world that has fueled music of this nature for the last thirty years. The dense dual-​guitar chug­ging with vig­or­ous power chord riffage gives strength to the hearty bel­lows and screams of the vocals, while the rhythm sec­tion dis­plays tremen­dous inten­sity. The solid, vin­tage hard­core chops that fill this entire record remind me of the con­cen­trated spate of acts from Road­run­ner, Vic­tory, and Equal Vision Records who led the way for metal and hard­core in the early ‘00s.

Yet for all of the praise I could heap upon the quintet’s musi­cal acu­men, I must pay due homage to the hard-​hitting lyri­cism of Drew Wilkin­son, as this is the true hall­mark of this album. “Magna Cum Laude” is a sear­ing track about the futil­ity of a receiv­ing a hard-​earned diploma, when all you do is become “a cog in a machine” with “degrees of hap­pi­ness like shades of grey /​never liv­ing a life just fill­ing a series of days.” On “Syco­phant,” we hear the cau­tion­ary tale of the loyal work­ing drone who’s gone awry in the dog-​eat-​dog work-​a-​day world. With “Occam’s Razor,” hope and anguish sit beside each other with lines like, “I want it all for all the world to see. I want to know what I’m missing.”

My favorite track on the record is “Syn­the­sia,” which con­tains this soul-​searing pas­sage: “I’m just look­ing for answers /​but I found bod­ies writhing on the floor /​fin­gers grasp­ing out for more /​des­per­ate eyes strain­ing long­ing for a vision /​abused hearts yearn­ing for a final inci­sion /​to cut away the pain.” And what strikes me hard­est about these words (and much of the con­tent in all of these songs) is that these aren’t songs penned by lazy, indo­lent, pissed-​off kids; these are philo­soph­i­cally deep ques­tions burst­ing with heart, pur­pose, and socio-​political awareness.

Ulti­mately, Run With The Hunted is jam-​packed with pow­er­ful, hard-​hitting tunes. Few tracks last beyond the three-​minute mark, and even those never drag on or turn into a pon­der­ous metal-​ish bal­lad. These are pit-​ready anthems, with strong rhythms and pac­ing for cir­cles, mosh­ing, and gen­eral fist-​raising (and I’m quite thank­ful for the lack of repet­i­tive break­downs). I’m really eager to hear what this tal­ented band cre­ates next.