I’m forever going to be disappointed that I missed the spectacle of the group Misfortune when they were around. Active during the same period of the previously reviewed band Peaks, Misfortune packed just as much punch through a darker lens. The music could be described as “blackened hardcore,” which is a mixture of black metal and hardcore punk, two intense genres of unrelenting speed and harshness. The members have since gone on to form other bands though their legacy lives on in the London hardcore scene.

Feathered Duke and Tar Fowler is a three-song release and clocks in around 10 minutes. The recording quality can only be described in words as shrill for its treble-high presence that brings the guitars and cymbals to the forefront. Intentional or not, that may be one thing that pops out at you initially.

The vocal style of the recordings is hardcore punk derived with growling shouted vocals that differ from the more precise and tailored screams of metal musicians. To some, this difference isn’t noticeable, but the performance is quite different in this regard as metal vocals are usually controlled and done with technique in mind.

Backing the in-your-face vocals is a barrage of dissonant guitar riffs and a blur of drumming styles that utilize extreme speed and technicality to punch the listener right in the jugular. You have the iconic blast beat – an extremely fast drum beat where the kick and snare are played in unison. It’s rhythmically simple but incredibly hard to be consistent with. As well, the slower crawls found in the heaviest sections of hardcore music known as “breakdowns.”

The bass is fairly inaudible much to my dismay as a bass player, but their style doesn’t necessarily call for it. All of the dissonant melodies are sung from the guitar, which I can only presume the bass follows intently and only adds that low end rumble for the live environment.

This blending of metal and punk is nothing inherently new, but it’s hard to reach any sort of originality in this case when almost every sub-genre has been defined. This doesn’t cut back on the band’s performance, however, as they perform this mix properly.

Often today, metal and hardcore are defined by larger groups under the umbrella term “metal core” in which hardcore bands will embrace the techniques and styles of extreme metal (death metal, grindcore, thrash metal, black metal, etc.) while retaining their attitude and “punk” style.

Beginning in the ‘90s with groups like Converge, Hatebreed, and Earth Crisis the genre exploded after the nu-metal frenzy went down with bands like Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and Atreyu gaining massive success and spawning an endless wave of bands that use metal conventions in their breakdown-centric songs.

While these bands still fit the term, we’ve arguably lost more connections to older metal and hardcore bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s. As such, you see bands on both ends of the spectrum not performing at blistering speeds both genres are noted for and merely falling into a pit (no pun intended) of open string breakdowns with little intensity. The production values are far too clean and unnatural, which unless you have the proper gear, cannot be recreated live.

It is bands like Misfortune that have kept the torch burning. What may seem like harsh noise to some, there exists a certain level of musical stamina that many artists cannot take on. Its understanding that metal and punk come from the same roots, long influencing each other and becoming staple sounds of our music world today. I hope to see more bands like this in our scene someday that blend these two things that I have long admired and appreciated instead of another “We Are ______” type group that lacks brutality and aggression.