Sinaloa - Footprints on Floorboards (2005)

"My hand holds fire / better put it to use / My enemy has water / theres no time for a truce"

Its time for pure subjectivity. I love this band. One of my favorite current hardcore bands. Even though theyre not really hardcore. They dont mute their guitars, they dont play really fast. In fact, they sound more like late 80's DC stuff, and even then, not really. But yet it is still hardcore, somehow. I mean, they did splits with Ampere, Wolves, Catena Collapse. What makes hardcore "hardcore' is not for me to decide, nor is it even relevant really. Sinaloa is awesome. I already did a review for them, where I compared them to Native Nod, what with their jangling guitar sounds, shaky spoken vocals that border on collapse, every so often toeing the line to an actual scream. Theres definitely some Rites of Spring sound, but filtered through the mid 90's influence of bands like Policy of 3 or Current. I think therein lies the reason I like Sinaloa so much, aside from their obviously cool lyrics. I loved Current. One of my favorites from back then. Same with Native Nod. They had a very melodic sense of rocking out without being purposefully heavy, and ended up sounding almost more powerful because of it.

Sinaloa does all these things, without a bass player. Just two guitars and a drummer. All three guys singing (screaming, talking, whispering, whatever), but passion drips from every corner of this record. At first, I only cared about their song from the Ampere split, and found this album difficult to get into. For some reason I started listening to this again and I figured I mustve been smoking crack, cuz this album is just as good as the songs from the split. Theres not a weak song on this, and the lack of a bassist isnt even noticeable, as the bands locks all the notes together in such a way that everything sounds full and meshed together really well. The drumming is also a key factor, as it is all that drives the rhythms, and Sinaloa happens to be pretty good at rocking a good beat, if you you know what im saying.

If you liked the split, get this record. You can get it from their myspace for $8!!!.