Remembering Never -- 'Women and Children Die First' [review]

Remembering Never
"Women and Children Die First"
Ferret Records


"This bandwagon's on its last leg. How long will you beat this dead horse?"
-- From "serenading this dead horse"


Remembering Never apparently started off as a joke band, though you'd never guess it after listening to the band's latest offering, "Women and Children Die First."

After releasing "Suffocated My Words To You" in 2001, the band went through "severe line up changes" (according to the band's biography), signed with Ferret, and recorded "She Looks So Good In Red" the following year.

Polishing their sound with constant touring with the likes of hardcore staples such as Between the Buried and Me, Every Time I Die and Dead to Fall (amongst others), the band headed back into the studio and created "Women and Children Die First."

At one point, Remembering Never's sound strongly resembled that of Poison the Well, and many reviews point out similarities between the bands' lead singers, but on "Women and Children," the singing seems much more guttural and Remembering Never's melody is more intrinsically set within the heavy, hardcore style of the band. Also, the acoustic guitar sprinkled around "She Looks Good" is abandoned and forgotten here except for a particularly pointed moment during the bridge in the last track.

The disc opener, "for the love of fiction," really sets the stage for "Women and Children": driving guitars, crushing bass and thundering drumming tightly knit around lead singer Peter Kowalski's intense vocals -- sometimes screaming, sometimes lower, discreet and intentional and sometimes transitioning to wails of emotional.

Kowalski growling out "This is an exaggeration of your mortality" over a wailing lead guitar and accompanying thick rhythm and bass onslaught opens up "a grenade in mouth tragedy," and after the third track, "plotting a revolution in A minor," it becomes clear Remembering Never aren't going to let up.

"incisions" is one of the many perfect songs off the disc. From the opening sound of an old-fashioned camera developing (a sound you'll recall from the "Texas Chain Saw Massacre" movies), the song evolves from an eerie, hardcore attack to a hauntingly beautiful metal anthem, layer upon layer peeled back and exposed. Within the first 30 seconds of this four minute plus track, there's a bludgeoning guitar and bass intro, a hint of high pitched guitar noodling sliced up by the start/stop of the drums and the song as a whole; Kowalski initially growls out the lyrics before opening up his throat and letting loose with some insane singing. And that's all in the song's first 30 seconds?! The song continues its breakneck pace, steamrolling to a hault with the lead singer repeating "Die knowing you lived your life on you knees."

The disc's swan song of sorts: the closer "serenading this dead horse," a song encompassing the band's feelings about the downfall of the hardcore scene, the banner of which Remembering Never holds high. Within the disc's liner notes is a letter from Kowalski and the band discussing (in depth) the dilution of the hardcore scene due to trends, less-than-sincere bands and posers. "Now it all seems to be about cool hair and who has the bigger belt buckle," Kowalski writes.

"We've been working on this record since the day we got out of the studio for 'She looks...' and were extremely unhappy with it ... This record is to the memory of hardcore ... but most importantly this record is for you."

"dead horse" alone is a must-hear for any fan of the genre, a perfect hardcore song with all the elements that fans could easily pick out: the driving guitars and forced vocals, the thudding drumming and bass riffs, the more mellow bridges and vocal accompaniment, and smart lyrics: "Shed another tear as I stab you in the chest with pieces of your broken heart. Fuck your broken heart. Why can't you let this die?"

And the exclamation point to the disc is a hidden track: a completely blistering cover of Pantera's "Strength Beyond Strength," complete with Kowalski's dead-on screaming of "Stronger than all" at the song's conclusion with the great guitar riffs, repetitive and fading out.