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Another entry in the XClaim saga - DYS “Brotherhood” used to be my favorite, although now I consider it to be a bit of a lesser entry. Still it has a special place in my heart and the first few songs are all stone cold ‘82-core classics.

Open Up starts it out with a classic mid-paced bass part and Dave Smally’s distinct teenaged voice cracking. For those keeping score, this is his best vocal performance ever (by far). The song rails against hardcore and punk dropouts (irony!) in a truly fist pumping manner. Next comes, what in my opinion is the unquestionably best DYS song, More Than A Fashion. This track opens with the classic DYS stompy mosh part which is utilized in a few of their songs, but is best displayed here. It’s an in your face straight edge anthem ripping at the seams from all the youthful energy coursing through the band before they explode into a fast part that repeats the lines “Straight Mind/Razor’s Edge…”. It also contains the straight edge lyrics that I relate to more than any other:

“It’s a way of life that says I don’t need
Hangovers, freak-outs or expensive weed
Rather buy a record any day
My mind is here, not far away”

I mean really - that pretty much breaks down my world view here people.  Next comes Circle Storm, which is a pretty great anti-racism thrash number. Perfect use of gang-vocals on this one. After that you get City To City, another alltime great, with the heaviest riff on the album and a pounding beat that gives the toms a workout. A great mosh track, you can’t go wrong with this. Closing out side A is The Girl’s Got Limits, which is kind of an inept AC/DC style jam. It’s pretty good but kind of kills the vibe a little bit especially right after a song that proclaims “We’re Serious and We Won’t Go Away”.

Side B starts with the title track which has a similar construction to Circle Storm. Great powerful throbbing hardcore thrashing. Of course it’s a song about your brothers/friends, etc. Obviously this combined with the last song makes it sort of obvious these aren’t the most socially progressive young boys, but what do you people want? The next 3 tracks, Yellow,  Stand Proud, and Insurance Risk are all good jams, but are kind of the less notable jams on this album. Even if they’re not all as good as More Than A Fashion though, they’re still pretty good, and better than the filler tracks on The Kids Will Have Their say. Anyway, things close out with Escape, which for some reason (I’ve never quite known why) opens with some King Arther based sample. Anyone know what that’s about? Anyway this is the archetypal Boston dirge. Lots of cheap echo on the vocals, a grinding two-note guitar riff - it’s pretty good but it also ends with the lines “Crawl into the blackness/scream into my mind”. I can’t really do much with that.

Anyway that’s all 15 minutes of Brotherhood, encapsulated. These days it just doesn’t compare to the precision and power of My America or Is This My World, or just the out and out low-brow idiocy of the Negative FX lp (honorary X-Claim release). Not sure what else to say about this one really. I still need a copy actually.