The Fire Next Time

Named for James Baldwin's impassioned plea to end racism in America, the Fire Next Time is an intense post-hardcore band with the sweltering riffs of At the Drive-In and the bombastic, screamed vocals of ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, courtesy of Dim Mak's own Steve Aoki. At first listen, the spiraling anthems might sound as pedantic as first-wave hardcore. But on Sound of a Threat, the members of the Fire Next Time are legit revolutionaries, borrowing from Huey P. Newton on "Appeasement Comes With a Smile" and singing about "histories that are screaming to be heard" on "Stealing the Fire" and a "web of power" on "One Question." It's hardly as intoxicating as the Blood Brothers' purple prose and demented narratives for example, but the Fire Next Time has a similar gift for acoustic assaults, and from the thundering beats to the sprawling, at times grindcore guitars, the bandmembers do what they do quite well. ~ Charles Spano, All Music Guide