Furious Styles' second album,
Menace, was released in late 2008 and solidified their NYCH credentials with another potent set of spirited and thought-provoking music, none of it giving any indication that the group's home base was actually located across the country, in Seattle. What's more, Seattle's own criminal subculture reportedly inspired the lyrics for much of the album, providing a suitably bleak tableau for righteous musical indictments like the misanthropic "Enemy of the World," the anti-authoritarian "Pig's Blood," and the particularly desperate "Another Day in Hell." Along with the album's remaining, impressively consistent track list -- which includes both all-out speedsters (see "It's a Trap!," "Stillbirth") and vari-speed anthems ("Rat Poison," "Bastard") -- these muster a bludgeoning ferocity of frightening intensity, further emphasized by the group's twin-guitar team, which is quite atypical for notoriously Spartan hardcore. The end result is a surprisingly powerful and stirring CD by any measure, proving NYHC really has no geographical boundaries so long as the spirits of those involved is in the right place. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia