 Paying homage to your influences can be a serious preoccupation in hardcore circles; a scene that often seems to consider authenticity and values of far greater importance than the music itself. Ensign embraced the traditional sound of New York hardcore many years ago, so the fact that they've decided to release an album of covers to celebrate the bands that inspired them should come as no surprise. The only question should be why it has taken them so long!
The choices on Love The Music, Hate The Kids aren't as straightforward as you might expect. Sure, some of the legendary hardcore acts are covered here - Bad Brains, Dag Nasty, Negative Approach, Sick Of It All, Killing Time - but Ensign's tastes surprisingly stretch to The Descendents, Hüsker Dü and The Replacements.
While it's hard to criticise any CD that has a song by The Dwarves on it, no matter what the origins of the originals, Ensign make them sound like Ensign songs, and not particularly good ones at that. Maybe that seems like an unusual comment, but the sound of Love The Music, Hate The Kids is very one dimensional, and betrays only a fraction of the variety of the original acts. In truth, there are better ways to discover Ensign and the bands that influenced them, but as an exercise in homage paying, Love The Music, Hate The Kids does the job. :: Rowan Shaeffer |
