Reviews
Album review: Ocean Grove – ODDWORLD
Melbourne party-starters Ocean Grove get weird in both good ways and bad on album number four…
The polluted new video for Brick By Brick's track featuring Municipal Waste's Tony Foresta is an all-night rager.
Brick By Brick are here to get fucked up. The New York hardcore four-piece play huge, confrontational music about dealing with everyday life. From conformity to heartbreak to the working week, Brick By Brick tackle it all with inexhaustible anger and strength on their new album Hive Mentality, and they still find time to throw Skid Row and Motörhead covers in at the end. So how does the band navigate this treacherous world of ours? Simple: they hit the bar.
The band's new video for Bar Is Open is a visual document as to what happens when Brick By Brick's hoodied crew roll through an unsuspecting dive after a long day. It's the kind of pretense-less barrage of good-natured slaps on the shoulder and drunken grandstanding (gotta love a hardcore song with the lyric, "WHO BROUGHT THE RUM?!") that any self-respecting barfly knows all too much about. And while guest vocalist and professional party critic Tony Foresta of Municipal Waste doesn't show up in the video, the band find a perfectly wasted way of inserting him into the fray.
According to guitarist Mike Valente, “This music video just depicts a day in the life amongst friends. This is how life should be -- carefree and surrounded by loved ones. Sharing good times is what life should be about. The filming came naturally and captured these animals in their natural habitat.”
“Bar is Open is the sonic embodiment of the band and our lifestyle," adds vocalist Ray Mazzola. "Life is meant to be lived and enjoyed. Live hard, love hard and party hard with our friends and family. The song has its own energy and is a pure personification of the raging spirit in all of us. If you’re bored with life, you’re living wrong.”
Break out the cheap shit you keep under the sink and check out Bar Is Open below:
Brick By Brick's Hive Mentality is out now via Upstate Records, and available for purchase.
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Photo: Jim Wertman