bidhardcore.com

One of the few bands to be explicitly named by the term’s originators as “West Coast Power Violence”, No Comment occupy a special place even among the PV genre elite. A group impossible to replicate, and one of so few to produce a truly perfect record that transcends the genre it’s tied to - DOWNSIDED. One of the things that set the group apart from many others were the relatively clear shouts of Andy Beattie, who would sound as comfortable in any number of other Hardcore bands, but sounds so perfectly suited for No Comment. The constant wash of riffing is really driven by the start and stop of the drums, which I’ve heard the drummer had to take speed to perform adequately (no idea if this is simply legend). The sound is almost the musical equivalent to someone having a seizure or something. Every few seconds the song changes direction, but never collapses under the weight of itself. Each track is relatively simple, but deceptively so, as each one takes skill to put together with more split second stops starts and twists than most other genre bands would bother with. I think that’s part of what makes No Comment who they are and were. The will to really stretch a 20 second song for all it’s worth. For many that just means a quick blast of crash and bash, but No Comment were able to take the same ammount of time and really make it feel like a whole song in that time. It’s this kind of razor thin percission that really defines them. In all they rip through 11 songs, the first 10 of which are covered, I think in less than 5 minutes, the last of which preserves the tradition of ending with a long heavy outro. Like some other entries on here, it’s sort of difficult to know what to even say about a record thats meant so much to me, and thrilled me so many times. It’s not even that Downsided is “this” or “that”, it just is,(for me at least). I remember when I finally obtained the actual 7″ (had a discography prior to that), and looking at the weird foldout sleeve. The collage on the front with the baby and all the drugs, the strange look of the members, the giant fold out of the arm on the inside, the cryptic lyrics. The final proof that No Comment were just their own island I guess.