Something of a post-hardcore supergroup, New York's
Blood Red finds the singer from the well-regarded Silent Majority, Tommy Corrigan, joining forces with his bassist brother Vincent Corrigan's band
Inside (guitarist Thomas Comerford and drummer Craig Willis complete the lineup) for a new project that owes little to the more traditional hardcore of their previous bands.
Hostage has all the intensity of the Corrigans' prior work, but the huge, anthemic sound of the album has an oddly retro quality to it; between Tommy's booming, impassioned vocals and Comerford's newfound fondness for droning, chorused guitar parts, much of
Hostage sounds like a collision between post-hardcore, emo, and one of these genres' less-acknowledged forebears, the '80s anthem rock of
the Cult, late
Gene Loves Jezebel,
the Alarm, and even early
U2. There's even "Our Lady of Mayhem," a brief vocals and piano track, which was one of that subgenre's favorite mid-album changeups. Overall,
Hostage is an enjoyable change from the usual spate of cookie-cutter post-hardcore bands, showing that there's still room for stylistic expansion in the style.