Speak 714

Knee Deep in Guilt (Revelation)
by Doug Sery

After a steady diet of Victory releases, it’s easy to forget that not every hardcore band has a lead singer with throat cancer and a rhythm section more attuned to speed metal than punk rock. So, it’s almost impossible to convey the welcome sense of relief that came over me as I slipped Speak 714‘s Knee Deep in Guilt into my CD player and was greeted with music that had nuance and lyrics with intelligence.

Featuring ex- and current members of Ignite, No for an Answer, and SlapShot, it would be easy to dismiss this as some sort of hardcore supergroup, created for the sake of a cheap buck and an easy lay. But Speak 714 warmed the aging cockles of my heart with some good old-fashioned California punk rock (plus a healthy dollop of East Coast hardcore in the vein of SlapShot). Not content with a slew of hammering powerchords, Speak 714 offers forth punk rock with complexity and depth, similar to Dischord or Epitaph (on a good day) bands. And lyrically, like their music, they’ve managed to avoid the lockstep mentality of so many hardcore bands, recognizing that black and white might look fine in an Ansel Adams photo, but life exhibits multiple shades of gray. The conformist straight-edge litany of the seeming majority of today’s hardcore bands is put to shame by a real-world sensibility exhibited in songs like “Throwing Stones” – “This is a song about addiction/A pilgrimage down a dead end road/We can’t philosophize/We cannot know/Until we’ve seen through addict’s eyes we can’t throw stones.” So lose the brown shirt and nestle down with a slice of urgency that will keep your shaven head bobbing while the monochromatic shades are lifted from your eyes. There’s a lot of color out there. Take some time to experience it.
(PO Box 5232 Huntington Beach, CA 92615)