To tap into the present moment while simultaneously avoiding its pitfalls is no easy task, but on their debut LP Echo Planet, San Diego’s Negative Blast make it look easy. Engineered and mixed by the band’s own Alex Jacobelli at Sunsick Studios, mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege, and releasing on Quiet Panic Records, Echo Planet is a fully realized, layered, and expertly crafted slab of hardcore punk that is both unconcerned with convention and deeply reverent of the genre’s roots.

The members’ musical pedigree runs the gamut from 2000s hardcore stalwarts Lewd Acts and Hour of the Wolf to innovative post-punk act [CON•TACT], with the recent addition of Mario Rubalcaba throwing Hot Snakes, Earthless, OFF!, and more into an already impressive list of bona fides. Boasting those qualifications, it’s no surprise that Negative Blast are as precise as they are left of center. With a knack for mid-tempo dirge that evokes My War-era Black Flag or Pissed Jeans and a darkly atmospheric melodic sensibility that calls to mind contemporary acts such as Gel, Negative Blast are at once of the moment and outside of it entirely. Where other bands might eschew melody, Negative Blast employ it as a foil to their naked aggression, resulting in a sonic push and pull that keeps every second of Echo Planet’s sub-20 minute runtime exciting and engaging.

Inspired by groups like Refused and the Mars Volta, Tucson-based post-hardcore quintet the Bled burst onto the national scene with their 2005 Vagrant debut, Found in the Flood. By that point, the band’s lineup featured vocalist James Muñoz, guitarists Ross Ott and Jeremy Talley, and a rhythm section of Darren Simoes (bass) and Mike Pedicone (drums), though like most bands they’d endured some lineup changes in the past. Previous to the Vagrant deal, the Bled had been on Fiddler, where they issued the 2003 album Pass the Flask. That album, however, eventually fell out of print and became hard to find, prompting Vagrant to reissue it in March 2007 with additional bonus tracks (which included cuts from the Bled’s earliest EPs). ~ Johnny Loftus, Rovi