SMOKE AxD – Vaya Con Dios EP

Smoke AxD (aka Smoke All Day) brings together artists previously associated with Madball, Crown of Thornz and Hatebreed, which, in hardcore terms, sounds like it should be pretty amazing. On this EP, those musicians bring some massive riffs, as you’d expect, and the vocal performances often attack like a concrete sledge. There are a lot of moments where the material sounds like something unearthed from the late 90s, so they’ve got that classic/nostalgic angle covered too. So, why then, do the five songs on this EP sound so…frankly uninspired?

There’s nothing wrong with taking a tried and tested route. It’s often better to take something familiar and do a grand job than try and forge a new path that doesn’t sound quite right, but Smoke AxD sound like three guys going through the motions. A band pulling influences from a hat and ticking them off one by one.

The best case in point comes from ‘From Hate We Came’ which blends elements of Sepultura’s ‘Chaos AD’ with the aggression of ‘Burn My Eyes’ era Machine Head. This, as you’d expect, creates an absolutely massive sound, and by cutting through bits of that with an occasional sharp riff that could be from the ‘Demanufacture’ era Fear Factory school of anger, it leaves nothing to chance in terms of all round heaviness. Factor in a shouty hardcore vocal that is perfect for the style, and it’s brilliantly aggressive, but it’s just too obvious. The music never adds anything exciting, and as a result, it’s the sort of track you’ll get half way through and wonder why you aren’t spending your precious listening time with any of those old favourites instead. ‘The Codes We Chose’ takes a blueprint that is very similar, but swaps the occasional Fear Factory-esque moments for a darker, heavier hardcore groove and an extra compliment of double bass drums. Again, it doesn’t skimp on the aggression, and makes its point very directly, but the moments of Cavalera-esque chugging and “fuck you” hook sound like a massive cliché in thrash/hardcore crossover terms at the time of this release in 2024.

‘Unstoppable’ is a big improvement, since the mid-tempo sledgehammer is broken up by a more rhythmic hook and one of the EP’s most impassioned shouts – very much tipping the hat to classic Biohazard fare. It shows Smoke AxD’s commitment to an old school hardcore cause far more directly, and that in itself makes this the stand out track, but an old school lead guitar break and an atmospheric instrumental interlude both go some way to making this far more interesting, arrangement-wise. It’s a pity, then, that the title cut immediately bins most of that in favour of a half-arsed Rob Zombie workout from 1998 overlaid by a heavily distorted vocal that spends half of its time desperately trying not to break into Sepultura’s ‘Roots Bloody Roots’ (you can have a decent stab at singing parts of the verse over the top of this), creating something that sounds like a half-remembered night at a 90s metal club. Beyond a decent amount of volume, there’s not much to get excited about here, but it’s still better than ‘Smoke All Day’, which sounds like a Machine Head throwback played by a hardcore band with no imagination. It isn’t really until a siren-like guitar threatens to rise up that this track does anything vaguely interesting. Unfortunately, that guitar is merely there to introduce a premature fade, making this yet another very generic slab of metal-infused hardcore.

In terms of crossover hardcore, this has a solid sound. Regrettably, that’s pretty much all it’s got. The musicians draw influence from some classic sources, but then merely recycle those until they feel they have enough material for an EP. There’s not anything about the songwriting that makes Smoke AxD’s predictable sound in any way forgivable. Since the press materials claim that ‘Vaya Con Dios’ was inspired by “two of Hoya Roc’s passions: heavy riffs and cannabis”, maybe too much time spent with the spliffs accounts for the lack of genuine spark here? This is, at best, an average EP – a curio for Madball fans only.

May 2024