Reign Supreme Testing the Limits of Infinite

You know the drill. This is Deathwish hardcore. Reign Supreme's latest record, Testing the Limits of Infinite is a pristine example of some of the tightest, most enthusiastic metallic hardcore available today. The riffs are massive. The tracks are anthemic. The gang vocals are abundant. It's everything a solid hardcore album should be. But it's also the best CD this year about which I'll more or less completely forget. It's a harsh realization, but despite the fact that I know I enjoy putting Testing the Limits of Infinite on for a spin, I can never remember anything distinctive about it thirty minutes after it's over. So what do I do Suck it up and pronounce this to be the hardcore genre's pride and joy of 2009 Or do I write yet another ambiguous summary about how I might just be burnt the fuck out So here's what we're going to do. This is now a choose-your-own-adventure review. If you know you love Bridge Nine's and Deathwish's brands of hardcore and can't get enough of 'em, continue on to paragraph four. If you like current hardcore, but still get noticeably more enjoyment out of your Integrity discography, skip to paragraph five. If you own a Winds of Plague CD (or downloaded one from the Internet), stop reading now. There's something to be said for delivering hardcore anthems dripping in enthusiasm. It's a bit tough to pull off on a recording, and even tougher to accurately quantify; it's an effortless feat for Reign Supreme. As soon as the 90 second long "Mother Superior" churns out the disc's first set of monster metallic hardcore riffs, waves of energetic group vocals, and well-placed guitar squelches, it's clear that these guys can execute to a tee. "Apostle" is chock-full of stellar two-step and double bass-heavy moments, while "And Come What May" offers destined-to-be-crowd-favorite lyrics like, "We'll always carry each other / We'll carry on." Throw in a track with a quick dash of clean vocals ("To Live and Die (In Vain)") and a comparatively epic closer ("A Ghost in the City") and you've got a perfectly executed, highly appealing hardcore record. Sure, it's on the straightforward side, but it's heavy, well-written, and meant to destroy at shows. And that's the point, right [Skip to the bottom line.] At its roots, hardcore wasn't meant to be an overly complex machine. Influential metallic hardcore acts like Terror, Integrity, and Turmoil certainly understood this and excelled by embracing this fact, rather than avoiding it. This same mentality is at the core of Reign Supreme's style; the heaviness, enthusiasm, and execution are all there. But when every track simply features the same basic permutations of giant breakdowns, relentless drumming, and palm-muted riffs that a number of bands of yesteryear have already perfected, it's tough to truly get excited. It's okay to recognize something as good, but still be perplexed as to why it just doesn't have the same appeal. And that perfect example is Reign Supreme. Testing the Limits of Infinite might be capable in a number of ways, but something's just not clicking. Oh well, right Bottom Line: It is just about indisputable that Reign Supreme is one of the most finely-tuned hardcore units in the current scene. But I suspect that there will be two groups of people who will be butting heads over this one: those who are willingly immersed in modern hardcore and who embrace everything that Deathwish and Bridge Nine spit out, and those who might own too many hardcore records to get genuinely pumped about another straightforward metallic hardcore band. I'm a little bit of both. Argue away.