3 out of 5

Label: Equal Vision

Produced by: J. Robbins

‘Art Offensive’ is a tightly wrapped hardcore art-punk bomb, a strong and solid three-star effort that’s inexcusably exactly what it wants to be as a representative of the grown-up punk scene.  Masterful musicians all playing and singing their hearts out, undeniably enthused for each pummeling track, raising J. Robbins up to the level of delivering some of his most meaty production work, unable to distill the heavy groove the band effects.  While there are moments that predict some of where the group’s members would go – the staccato interplay of heavy bass and drumming are especially notable in Young Widows – as well as the general evolution of the post-punk scene – Rob Patterson’s monotone-talk shtick on tracks like ‘Gift to the Sea’ could be swapped out with Steve Snere on an early These Arms Are Snakes track – that’s not to peg Black Cross as a transitional music footnote: there’s not a moment on the album when you doubt the cohesiveness of the band or that simply sounds like something else.  It’s their own brew of the genre, and proof of how somewhat generic elements – three cord stomps, Patterson’s plaintive vocal style – can burst way past being called generic if everyone brings their A game.  And with the intelligent, clearly delivered lyrics, smartly volleying between hardcore snarls and fist-pumping shouts, and the occasional flourishes of stop/start dynamics and twists to the end or bridge of a song paired against some straight-forward minute long punk blasts, that’s clearly the case.  The cost of all this energy, though, is that there’s nary a moment to breathe.  You’ll be hard pressed to point out when it goes from one track to another, which is sort of a stuttering experience that results in the disc seeming almost like a live show where there’s another group waiting in the wings and so Black Cross must rush through their set.  While this keeps adrenaline high, for an album it masks the inventiveness sprinkled throughout, making those more typical punk blasts the dominant sound that remains and mostly what prevents it from making a lasting impression beyond that energy.  Still, it’s perhaps smarter that the group decided to keep things so compact as opposed to adding room for the sake of more effective sequencing.