Igniting with all the energy of JUDGE, XREPRESENTX and early SICK OF IT ALL, Los Angeles’ BERTHOLD CITY lets you know what it’s about in the first 10 seconds of What Time Takes…which is good, as we only have 7 minutes to work with here. Slashing guitars, drums on full auto, and vocals that demand to be not only heard, but respected. ‘No One To Blame’ flails, but focused, a clear sense of direction and self-introspection snarl-spitting into a mirror held up to modern society. “I’ve seen the ugly truth! Got you figured out!” is confrontational in the way only the most righteous of hardcore can be, something missing from quite a lot of metal these days, in this scribe’s not-so-humble opinion, and the song in which the lyrics reside, ‘Beware The Snakes’ is the pick of the album, all 1:47 of it, the phrase “Bite back!” at just over the halfway mark leading to the climactic detonation.
While BERTHOLD CITY may not be rewriting the book on hardcore and punk – and I’m not all that sure they want to, anyway – what they are doing, with What Time Takes, is putting a two-booted imprint on the pages of their chapter.
Review By: Lord Randall
BERTHOLD CITY
What Time Takes
WAR Records
4 / 6