The Hope Conspiracy

Endnote (Equal Vision)
by Vinnie Apicella

The Boston-based bombers let ’em fly on their second release, considered to be more “progressive” than their first, Cold Blue. Only if you define progression as nothing short of a reign of bullets and black clouds. The Hope Conspiracy, by their very name, seek to be the silver-lining amongst the despair we as a race have to muddle through on a daily basis. We come across the usual themes of defeat, defiance, depression – “Departed,” “Defiant Hearts, “Distant,” “Deadman” – all written into the titles, and conversely battling through them in a rage of riff-heavy exploits and deafening yelling.

It wasn’t until I got to the aside at the conclusion of “For Love” that I realized they wrote this record specifically for me. Or, in fact, for all of a failed adolescence living in bitter regret with insanity as the only means of escape… Social animals that we are, we find strength and solace in an album like Endnote. It’s an angst-filled and anti-conformist new age hardcore parallel to the Sick Of It All formula of a disillusioned youth brigade, and propelled by a taste for blood and Pro-Pain-like aggression tempered with ensuing madness and melodic dissonance that’s emotional at its core, nervous at the extremes. We have the evening news to remind us of the misery of our surroundings, but it takes an album like this, with all its misery-loves-company rousing and quick-flying chunks of fear and frustration, to connect with the listener, at once pummeling the point home, yet cradling the still-impressionable child within.
(PO Box 14 Hudson, NY 12534)