Post-Hardcore is a genre that casts a seriously wide net. There are all kinds of different musical directions a band can take while still falling under its umbrella. You’ve got your groovy Fugazi post-hardcore, your borderline emo a la Thrice, your borderline mall metal a la Bring Me the Horizon, the frenetic San Diego sound, the lockstep rhythms of DC, and whatever the hell you want to call The Dismemberment Plan. For my money, though, there’s one era of post-hardcore that came and went all too quick and never really had its chance to shine. I’m talking, of course, about the “White Belt” music of the early aughts. Bands like The Blood Brothers, An Albatross, and The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower made serious waves with their ear splitting, treble soaked riffs, provocative live shows, and spastic rhythms – and then seemingly all at once, the bands split, the hype died, and the scene faded into obscurity.
Lucky for us, Campaign Committee is bringing back the good ol’ days on their Let’s Die EP. While they lack the jelly bracelets and blown-out-the-back haircuts of their forebears, they’ve got all the marks of a classic White Belt Hardcore band. The lyrics are delivered in a choked snarl, like a zombie stuck in a bear trap. The guitar riffs alternate between a pummeling low end grind and those off-kilter jangles that are so angular you just know the guitarist’s fingers are arranged in a diagonal line. And of course they’ve got the requisite oversized non-sequitur song titles which I’ve missed so dearly (“Vote Maybe On Proposition Go Fuck Yourself”). But as much as Let’s Die tickles my nostalgia bone (if ya catch my drift), what keeps bringing me back to this EP are the heady little stylistic shifts Campaign Committee tosses in. From the oddly timed pull-off counter-melodies in “De Neuf” to the dissonant walking bass and overlaid vocal samples of the title track, the band artfully injects cerebral touches into their song structures without ever making you feel like you have to stop moshing. So dust off that Castro Hat and jump in the pit, ‘cause it’s time to pick up some damn quarters.
