Modern Life Is War My Love, My Way (reissue)

As I stated in my review of MLIW's second album Witness, I was never particularly impressed with My Love, My Way the first time around. At the time, I felt that it was a well-done but relatively derivative hardcore record that showed a certain amount of potential and room for growth. It's been three years since its initial release and the good folks over at Deathwish Inc. have decided to re-release this, the band's debut album, remastered, repackaged and featuring two bonus tracks originally from the band's first 7". It's an excellent treatment for what many consider a classic and it was a second chance for Modern Life Is War to impress me. This time around, it still hasn't blown my mind, but time has been remarkably kind to My Love, My Way and it sounds just as fresh now as it ever did. The first thing that struck me about My Love, My Way this time around is how little the band seemed to understand their own dynamic ability at this point in their career. Witness was built around varying tempos and structures, often relying on a less-is-more approach to instrumentation to let the individual vocal and musical performances shine through. My Love, My Way is a much more uniform affair, rarely reaching either the furious speed of "D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S." or the curious slow points that made Witness such a unique hardcore record. Instead, most of the songs here stay at a safe fast-ish hardcore tempo and count on the band's collective strength to keep things going. The problem with this approach is that it just isn't as effective when so many other bands have done a similar style much better recently. Modern Life Is War's strengths definitely lie in their more forward-thinking tendencies and it's when these manifest that this re-release justifies its existence. From opener "Breaking The Cycle"'s unusual chord progression, most of the disc's twelve tracks feature something worth listening for. The guitar lines towards the middle of "Farmer's Holiday Association," one of the band's first tracks is actually some of the best work on this release. Additionally, Modern Life Is War have some of the most thoughtful and eloquent lyrics in hardcore today and this release is just as impressive on that ground as Witness. Bottom Line: While it doesn't carry the same weight as its follow-up, My Love, My Way is still definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of Modern Life Is War or passionate, adventurous and insightful hardcore. If you've already got a copy of this disc, I'd be hesitant to recommend the upgrade, but the two added songs and enhanced packaging do make it at least tempting. All in all, Deathwish's re-release is a nice treatment of a hard-to-find, easy-to-enjoy hardcore record.