‘Looking around I don’t like what I see, Cold dead eyes of complacency, Just sit back and accept this fate, A victim’s ego I refuse to inflate’ (You Conform)

It is tempting to switch off a little now when you hear that a band is resurrecting the NYHC sound of yesteryear.  Repeated pastiches and stale imitations have increasingly diluted what once slammed home with an invigorating venom.  Those reservations though can be set happily aside as you drop the needle on The Consequence.

Hailing from Denver, and featuring members of Candy Apple, Direct Threat, and Raw Breed, The Consequence are back with their debut self-titled album, building on their 2021 demo (also self-titled and which was put to vinyl on Youth Attack last year).  All the core NYHC fundamentals are firmly in place – burly riffage, brutish vocals, and the big gang choruses –and delivered with a well-executed relish as the band confront a self-imposed conformity born of lethargy and emotional dishonesty.

The key though, perhaps, lies in the utterly swaggering rhythm section. The chunky bass lines sit front and centre of the mix, while the drums work with limber fluidity to inject a swinging dynamism that readily wards off the threat of getting bogged down in too much brawn.  Debt Of Flesh kicks proceedings off with an uncompromising intensity that never relents as we barge from the bruising bounce of Suffer to the slower burn stomp of You Conform, by way of combative escalation of Within This Cell.  Proof that, in the right hands, there is plenty of life in the old dog yet.