From The Heart – Rebuild

Album Review

[FRAMED]

Rotterdam and hardcore have never been strangers to each other. From The Heart have been part of that relationship since 2012, building their reputation through the kind of shows where the distance between band and audience tends to disappear quickly.

Seven years after Make It Last, Rebuild finds the Dutch five-piece returning with thirteen tracks and a title that suggests exactly what is happening here. This isn’t a band trying to abandon its foundations. Instead, From The Heart take the metallic old-school hardcore and eurocore they have always played and tighten the bolts.

No experiments for the sake of sounding contemporary. No unnecessary decoration. Rebuild is hardcore designed around riffs, movement and participation.

The Album

The Way I Am makes that clear immediately.

There is little interest in slowly introducing the record. The guitars arrive heavy, the vocals carry the familiar roughness of European hardcore, and the rhythm is built around the constant possibility of the next pit opening up. It establishes a formula that From The Heart rarely abandon across the album.

That isn’t necessarily criticism.

Keep Pushing and Stand Strong continue with the same combination of speed, metallic riffing and breakdown-driven weight. The influence of the European hardcore tradition is obvious throughout. There are traces of the directness associated with Backfire! and No Turning Back, alongside the heavier groove that has always allowed eurocore to sit comfortably between punk and metal.

Make It Right is one of the album’s clearest examples of how effective From The Heart can be when everything is stripped down. It doesn’t even need two minutes. The track moves quickly between driving hardcore and heavier sections without wasting a second.

These songs don’t feel interested in proving how technically complicated hardcore can become. From The Heart are chasing something more physical. Start Over, Insomnia and Life all sound written with a live floor in mind. Riffs create movement, vocals leave room for audience participation and breakdowns arrive exactly where you expect them.

If you want to look for the biggest “weakness” of Rebuild you will find that it is also built into its identity of the album. From The Heart know precisely what kind of hardcore band they are, but that means the album rarely moves outside established territory. Anyone familiar with European hardcore from the late nineties onward will recognize most of the ingredients immediately. The album gives you what you expect from the band. If your are looking for diversity or something new in hardcore this might be a “weakness”, for everyone who wants to enjoy some good, loud European hardcore, this is the album you are looking for.

Then Sick And Tired arrives and demonstrates why the formula still works.

It’s aggressive without becoming needlessly complicated and carries enough groove to immediately suggest what happens when the song reaches a small club. That live quality runs through much of the second half of the album.

Higher Goal and Overcome keep pushing that momentum, while Old Fashioned almost functions as a statement of intent. From The Heart aren’t hiding where they come from musically. In a hardcore landscape increasingly filled with genre hybrids, extreme production and bands pulling influences from metalcore, industrial music and beyond, there is something refreshing about hearing a band simply commit to this sound.

But authenticity alone doesn’t make a record interesting. What keeps Rebuild moving is its energy. The production gives the guitars enough punch without making everything clinically polished. The vocals remain abrasive, the drums push rather than decorate, and the songs are short enough that repetition rarely gets enough time to become frustrating.

Stick Tight brings the record close to its conclusion with exactly the kind of communal hardcore mentality its title suggests.

And then there is Bier & Pup.

Hardcore albums aren’t exactly known for ending with a wink, but after twelve tracks built around perseverance, frustration, strength and unity, the closing track loosens things up considerably. It gives Rebuild a bit of personality beyond the otherwise serious hardcore exterior and prevents the album from simply ending with another breakdown.

More importantly, across these thirteen tracks From The Heart sound believable.

That matters in this particular corner of music. Hardcore audiences can detect posturing remarkably quickly. Rebuild doesn’t sound like five musicians trying to reconstruct an era they discovered afterwards. It sounds like people who have spent years playing this music, standing at these shows and understanding how these songs are supposed to function once they leave the record.

There is no revolution here. There is, however, a very solid hardcore record.

Shortly FRAMED

Rebuild does exactly what its title promises. From The Heart haven’t reinvented themselves, but they have returned with a tighter and heavier version of what they already do well. The record wears its old-school hardcore and eurocore influences openly, occasionally can feel predictable because of these ingredients, but compensates with genuine energy and songs clearly designed for the live environment. Rotterdam hardcore doesn’t need polishing. Sometimes it just needs riffs, conviction and a floor willing to move.

LOUD[FRAMED] rating: 7.5/10
★★★★★★★½☆☆

Released: April 21, 2024
Label: WTF Records