‘The pain of nostalgia is too much sometimes, It rears its head on these lonely nights, When my mind starts to wander and reminisce, About the goals we had and things we did.  Too naïve to appreciate what we held in our fingertips’ (Living In The Meantime)

This album transported me back to what was a rather fertile period for US hardcore in the early to mid-2000s.  A wave of bands from Stay Gold to Have Heart and from Modern Life Is War to Verse, emerged to wrestle the genre back from at what at the time felt like the suffocating grip of metalcore.  A leaner metallic edge was retained but with a healthy reinjection of melodicism, and a return to lyrics with an avowed social awareness that spanned both the political and personal.  By the time this renaissance began to take on new forms at the end of the decade, it felt like an important reconnection with hardcore’s roots had been forged.

Ever since, attempts to resurrect this particular tradition have largely proven unsuccessful.  It was almost as if it took the context of that specific time to ignite just the right blend of aggression and reflection.  But, have no doubt that Winnipeg’s Meantime have nailed it where many have failed.  You sense that they have absorbed their influences so instinctually that they are able to reimagine them with an unbridled honesty.

Living In The Meantime is the band’s debut full-length.  It bristles with intensity as heartfelt vocals explore largely introspective themes of frustration and anxiety, while underpinned by thoroughly well-crafted, high energy hardcore laced with flourishes of dark melody and gang vocals that are organically entwined throughout.  The result is an album that skilfully fuses the burly aggression of Blue Monday with the mournful sensibilities of Sinking Ships and Go It Alone’s sense of sonic drama.  Stand-out moments include the melancholy saturated Lacerate (featuring guest vocals from Home Front’s Graeme MacKinnon) and Immured as well the fierce Direction and the rampaging title track that brings proceedings to an exuberant close.