Band:	Ingrown
Album:	Idaho
Style:	Hardcore
Website:	https://ingrownhc.bandcamp.com/album/gun
Release date:	March 07, 2025
A review by:	RaduP

01. Bullet
02. Watch Your Back
03. Ingrown
04. Cold Steel
05. Enemy
06. Your Fault
07. Dead
08. Unite
09. Asylum (S.O.C)
10. Hellbound
11. Idaho

Of course it's a punk album that doesn't need more than 20 minutes to pummel you.

Runtimes in punk have always been on the shorter side. Traditional wisdom tells us that the 30 minute mark is the most proper runtime marking line between what is an EP and what is an LP. Just as you have some black metal or doom metal EP that casually break the 40 minute mark, punk and it's myriad of subgenres are often prone to completely break that line. Sure, not all of its subgenres walk around the rule, I'd be very wary of a post-punk or a symphonic deathcore album being 20 minutes long, but a screamo or a beatdown hardcore or a powerviolence one? Sure, go right ahead! This relationship between punk and shorter runtimes is something I've played with before when I tried writing a review before I finished listening to the short album. And I think what makes the short runtimes work for some subgenres and not for the others is how the energy is maintained in these faster paces. And Ingrown have fast paces and high energy.

While we're on the topic of runtimes, Idaho is the band's longest album at 18 minutes. Their only other full length record, Gun, was 14 minutes, and Dirty Demo and Meathead didn't even hit the 10 minute mark. Likewise, their discography has more songs under 1 minute than songs over 2 minutes. In fact, Idaho is their only album to have any songs over two minutes (though by less than half a minute more), while also having no songs that are shorter than one minute. I guess these "elongated" runtimes this time around are thoroughly representative of Ingrown maturing as songwriters. I'm only half joking.

The reason I'm picking Idaho for a review instead of any other random fast hardcore record is that it does what it does in a way that knows how to put its best qualities forward. The fast paces are obviously mosh worthy, but they also mean that each section passes by pretty quickly, leading to a lot of gear shifts that keep you on your toes without sacrificing the momentum that they build. The metallic hardcore takes in a bit from the more extreme genres, the blasts and fast riffing can feel like powerviolence, the slower sections and the gang vocals remind of beatdown hardcore, and there's a certain growly rasp in the vocals that isn't too far off from deathcore. The fast changing and somewhat varied sections, that still feel intense even if the sections that they are changing into do feel like they repeat themselves after a while; do make the short runtime feel thoroughly warranted, and the most surprising of the gear shifts in the acoustic instrumental piece that ends the record, acting like a pretty left-field but simple enough palette cleanser.

Ultimately, Idaho isn't an album that really needs any deep analysis. It's a very visceral and primal hardcore record, one that is very aware of what works in hardcore, and using exactly what works to make something that is instantly hard hitting.