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Media marketed for mass consumption in the United States can more often than not be horribly bad. Pop songs are mindless and pandering, and television gives us reality shows where we watch people do this one thing in order to stab their fellows in the back so they they can emerge at the end as the best chef/boxer/taxi driver/monkey wrangler and win valuable cash prizes. And when Lee Greenwood sang "I'm proud to be an American," the lines that he omitted from the song probably said something about it being a land where musicians could get rich reaching out to the lowest common denominator, and employing some themes and buzzwords that get the masses all excited and willing to go to Wal Mart and buy their next release.

OK, none of this is anything new, and much has been said about it much better than I have, but it's these sorts of things that came to mind as I listened to The Story So Far, the latest U.S. release from the UK hardcore outfit TRC. It's not that TRC sounds like any of the bad American music that makes me think of it, rather it's the fact that they don't. And it's the fact that this UK group, which makes its sound from combining seriously heavy hardcore and thrash with gritty hip hop points out how far behind America has fallen in certain areas of music.

In a musical history lesson that's not meant to be taken in any way other than a musical history lesson, America was one a superpower when it came to the merging of hip hop with harder formats. When Aerosmith and Run DMC meshed up in 1986 for "Walk This Way," it was one of the most commercially successful examples of what would be a golden era that included some great stuff from Wax Trax and Invisible records as industrial music found new ways to mesh formats, as Anthrax and Public Enemy joined up for "Bring The Noise," and everything that Ice-T would do to merge the sounds, from Body Count to his collaborations with Slayer for the Judgment Night soundtrack (doing an Exploited medley no less).

It was an exciting and promising time for music.

Today, how the U.S. has slipped in comparison to the rest of the world. Just looking at the UK for immediate examples, what comes up? There's Enter Shikari, who merge post-hardcore with electro, industrial and dubstep, and TRC, the example at hand, whose thrash heavy hardcore is meets up with the UK hip hop underground in an amalgamation that's exciting and raw.

What does the U.S. have to offer in comparison? brokeNCYDE. That's our answer. That's what the kids in the states have embraced. Crunkcore, which is so laughably bad that it's depressing. I'm just glad that The Story So Far didn't come out during the Olympics and garner this comparison while all eyes were on London, because it would have been embarrassing enough to send the U.S. team home in disgrace and embarrassment.

This realization that the UK sound is dominating isn't lost on TRC, who establish it all in the first track #TEAMUK, an anthem about their forward progression that points out that they're directly aware of where their country is headed:

Let's put it out for the world to see
I can't believe what I'm seeing on my TV
Man, the UK’s smashing it

As well as where they're heading:

These sounds giving hope to a nation
A statement that we should all keep chasing
We could be the next band to blow, why not? They made it.

It's a tune that suggests hope as well as the desire to represent their nation with their sound. It's fast and in-your-face, oozing aggression and bleeding credibility. It's simultaneously raw and polished, and most of all it's really good. In comparison, bands like brokeNCYDE look like traitors to country, and need to be dealt with as such.

A band once described as cocky, TRC has embraced the connotation for their own, making it a self-complimentary side effect of their self-confidence and knowledge that they're killing it through sheer hard work and raw talent. "Cocky Is Back" is a hard-hitting dose of aggro hardcore and plenty of thrash, with guitars that shred so much metal they're near to catching fire, and "Sweatbox" is so much than just a brutal retrospective on the early days of the band - It's a full blown anthem to the underground DIY scenes of every city, as well as a testament to the way these underground spaces help bring all the scenes together:

Welcome to the sweatbox, crammed in like sardines, raise ya fist
It's open mic with a twist,
There's no stage, no barrier, no bouncer banning dives
Just under 100 of us coming alive,
Whether hooded, skin, hair or new era
We all share this dance floor with each other, so duck and cover
Or brush it off, or simply stand at the back
Then pick a point to move to your favourite track.

In Detroit, I had my favorite "sweatboxes" that would bring small tight members of the underground together for live music, and Amsterdam has them too. Their such a vital aspect to any city with any sort of underground scene, and they're always worth their due attention.

TRC is a band with a big, brutal and legendary sound that's perfect for now. With an aggression and a metal edge that combines with a lyrical tightness, they're like Enter Shikari's cousin who had all the really heavy records that your mom wouldn't let you get, rolling with an intensity like someone got in a time machine, slipped back a few years to pick up Pop Will Eat Itself in their prime, locked them in an isolation tank for a few months where they were subjected to a mix of only heavily screened hip hop and metal, before pouring them on the present day streets, penniless, where they had to rebuild their credibility on their own. TRC has that cred, along with edge and talent. It's been forged with work, and any cockiness they exhibit is truly earned. They stand as an example of the incredible music scrabbling out of the UK underground, and should serve as a example of what's needed in the US in order for them to stand tall on the music scene, and why what the U.S. really needs in order achieve any status again is its next Body Count to answer to the music from across the pond.

Release Date: October 23, 2012

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