Band:	Agnostic Front
Album:	The American Dream Died
Style:	Punk, Hardcore
Release date:	April 03, 2015
A review by:	deadone

01. Intro
02. The American Died
03. Police Violence
04. Only In America
05. Test Of Time
06. We Walk The Line
07. Never Walk Alone [feat. Freddy Cricien, Toby Morse, Lou Koller]
08. Enough Is Enough
09. I Can't Relate
10. Old New York
11. Social Justice
12. Reasonable Doubt
13. No War Fuck You
14. Attack!
15. A Wise Man
16. Just Like Yesterday

Agnostic Front are back and they're pissed. The American Dream Died and the New York hardcore crew are here to spread the word with a veritable kitchen sink of aggressive heavy music centred on hardcore traditions they helped pioneer over thirty years ago.

The American Dream Died starts off promising enough. The first few tracks are in your face hardcore with a few metal riffs thrown in for good measure, especially on "Test Of Time". This is pretty pummelling stuff, especially after their previous album, My Life My Way, which sounded like a Madball influenced party punk album at times.

Then the kitchen sink effect kicks in with more heavy metal, Oi punk, pure hardcore, and pure punk stylings thrown in. It generally works and the catchier moments ala "Old New York" with its Madball meets Mighty Mighty Bosstones breaking up the faster pure hardcore/crossover numbers.

It does come at the cost of coming across as generic at times as well as a bit contrived. In fact it would be safe to say that this album feels like some sort of nostalgic look at 20 years of punk/hardcore development. It also means the energy established in the first five tracks dissipates and never really regains the momentum. The typical Nuclear Blast production doesn't help either. This needed more rawness, more razor sharpness and basically just more streetpunk attitude.

Roger Miret's newish vocal styles are still hard to get used to at times. They work better on the faster songs but on slower numbers they sound like mock vocals done by a joke band. Indeed the vocal style would be completely at home on stuff like Green Jelly's "Three Little Pigs" or even Arnold Schwarzenegger worshipping Arnocorps. Basically a return to his older cleaner shout style would be a step in the right direction.

It also feels lyrically contrived and hypocritical. Hardcore has always placed a high value on lyrical integrity and Miret comes across lacking here. On The American Dream Died he rants about how the USA is a an awful place to live and how it was better in the "old days." New York too apparently was better in the old days, despite being more crime ridden, with more poverty and general urban decay. Then in an interview Miret calls New York a college yuppy town and he says he preferred the old New York which was crime infested when it was "just danger and chaos walking down the street". So here's a convicted felon telling us how messed up the USA is and stating it was better when it was even more messed up.

To be fair most fans won't care much about any lyrical contradictions, ironically because most gladly pursue the modern American Dream with its emphasis on mindless consumerism and in which rebellion is a product to be packaged and marketed.

Despite its conventionality and loss of momentum The American Dream Died is still a decent little hardcore album. It's definitely an improvement over My Life My Way even though it's lacking in the visceral bite of even more modern albums such as Dead Yuppies or Warriors, let alone pioneering debut Victim In Pain or crossover classic Cause For Alarm. The variety is welcome especially in a genre where albums can come across as a one song cut and pasted 10-15 times.