11 tracks of noise damaged D-beat. Follow up to earlier demos this LP was originally recorded in 2018 and now finally seeing the light of day. Huge poster insert w/ art by Willow (Flower).


Our take: After dropping two highly regarded tapes in 2017/2018, Boston’s Innocent emerges from their slumber with Architects of Despair, their vinyl debut. It’s such a Boston thing for a band to lie dormant for years then emerge, with no hype or advance notice, with a record so killer that it makes you wonder if the band has been locked in a practice space for that entire time refining and honing every detail. That’s the impression I get with Architects of Despair, which is as airtight a hardcore punk record as you’ll find. Stylistically, Innocent’s sound is rooted in, but not constrained by, Discharge, taking that band’s musical motifs and refining them into something that’s more intricate but still has all the crushing power. Take a track like “Straw Men,” for instance, which starts with a riff straight out of the early Discharge songbook but, over the course of the song’s frantic minute and a half, pokes and prods that riff like a specimen on a dissecting table, manipulating its chords and rhythms until, as a listener, you feel like you’re trapped in a building that’s collapsing around you. The vocals are also very distinctive, a bit like Tam’s high-pitched yelp in Sacrilege, but (like the music), stretched to its extremes, rendered almost avant-garde by a long delay effect. While many noisy hardcore records in this vein cultivate a sense of wild abandon, Architects of Despair sustains a seething, simmering tension, its complexity and brutality dancing on the edge of collapse, a feeling that only slightly abates on the record’s two mid-paced tracks. If you follow the output of this universe of Boston hardcore punk bands—i.e. if names like Chain Rank, Lifeless Dark, Green Beret, and Exit Order mean anything to do—you’ll want to make time for this one.