Album review: Belvedere – Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense

Punk rock is often regarded as a young man’s game – a perception that persists, despite Green Day’s members rapidly approaching the big five-oh. It stands to reason that Calgary punks Belvedere might well have thought the same when life caught up with them in 2005, resulting in a six-year hiatus where the members took jobs, dabbled with side-gigs and started families.

Yet with experience comes perspective, a way of looking at the world that younger heads might miss if they’re crammed in a smelly van. On their sixth album, Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense, Belvedere’s worldview has become more directly political. ‘We’re sanitised and polarised / We’re claiming an enormous prize from Mother Earth,’ rails founding frontman Steve Rawles on Happily Never After, while on Good Grief Retreat he predicts that if people, ‘Unite as peers, the corporate veil should disappear’. Perhaps it is precisely because he has a family to fight for that Steve sounds like he has more skin in the game here.

Of course, this sermonising would be so much yelling at clouds if it couldn't move people. To that point, Chromatic is a 79-second thrasher that sees new recruits Dan Wollach (guitar) and Ryan Mumby (bass) trade riffs, sounding like Guns N’ Roses if Slash and Duff McKagan had spent the weekend partying with NOFX’s Fat Mike. By far, though, Comrade is the album’s most rousing moment. Steve may warn that, ‘Left and right will go to war, all while the ruling class evades us,’ yet it is counterbalanced by a rallying call for unity, with a collective spirit that will sound all the more potent when hollered by a crowd.

While not groundbreaking, Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense is a strong album from a band that know exactly where they stand: with one foot on a soapbox, the other in the pit.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Bad Religion, Propagandhi, NOFX

Hindsight Is The Sixth Sense is released on May 14 via Lockjaw.

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