Latest album from this Swedish d-beat / hardcore project.

Our take: A Question for Today… Not Tomorrow is the fifth record overall and second full-length from Umeå, Sweden’s Warchild. Given the band’s name and imagery, you might guess they play d-beat hardcore, and you wouldn’t be wrong. When I dropped the needle on A Question for Today…, the first comparison that came to mind was Totalitär. Like Totalitär, Warchild’s take on d-beat isn’t particularly heavy or noisy. The sound is powerful and clear, but the production doesn’t call attention to itself, instead asking you to focus on the riffs and songs. And they are killer! Again, like Totalitär, Warchild isn’t just banging out the gnarliest sounding chords they can find; their riffs feel well constructed, a sense of melody lurking just enough in the background to give the songs shape and character without distracting from their grittiness and power. The songs have a subtle cycle of building and releasing tension, several of them erupting in climactic guitar solos that, like the riffs, have the texture of Disclose-esque gestalt, but with that trademark sense of melody just outside the frame. A Question for Today... is an infectious record that’s almost too well done for its own good. If you’re into this particular Swedish hardcore sound, this isn’t one to miss.