It's hard to imagine a time when hardcore and metal were separated by fierce, mutually exclusive tribal codes. At an early point in the development of hardcore, to have long hair and a leather jacket at certain shows came with a genuine risk of physical injury. But even hardcore flagships like Sick of It All, Agnostic Front, the Crumbsuckers, and the Cro-Mags put out albums that leaned towards metal, while other hardcore pioneers like D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies, Corrosion of Conformity, and Prong all eventually transitioned fully into metal bands.
Despite these intertwined histories, though, it's easy to see why the division persists between these two camps: in general, metal encourages you to get carried away—be it by "Dungeons & Dragons" fantasy, exaggerated horror, Satan, or intellectual musing—while hardcore calls for you to keep your feet planted firmly on the ground. Hardcore bands also tend to fixate on their street credibility, to the point that their music functions as an incessant pledge of allegiance, which can be oppressive if you have no interest in relating to dogma of the lifestyle.
True Will, the debut album from White Widows Pact, allows us to imagine a world where this division never existed. Citing Madball, Obituary, and Crowbar as its three primary influences, the Brooklyn quintet consciously tips its cap to the mid-'80s/early-'90s heyday of three different scenes—New York hardcore, Florida death metal, and southern sludge, respectively. In so doing, White Widows Pact reminds us that metal and hardcore were always perfectly suited for mating with each other and that, in fact, the two forms share the same DNA.
Of course, it's not like this is revelation in 2015. It's been over 25 years since Brutal Truth strode into the same tangle of sub-genres, eventually taking an Edward Scissorhands approach and carving them into new shapes. Countless bands have done the same, with varying degrees of creative innovation. Take even a quick glance at the Victory Records or Century Media catalog and you'll never run out of mosh breakdowns from bands fusing death metal with hardcore. Listening to True Will, though, it's obvious that White Widows Pact isn't trying to invent anything new. It's more like the band took scoops of three different ice cream varieties, let them melt in the same dish for a bit, and stirred them up into one uniform flavor.
Toward the beginning of the track "Thirteen Years of War", for example, White Widows Pact is able to infuse a palm-muted, death metal-style chug with the intangible—but unmistakable—urban swagger of hardcore. It's a subtle coloration, and it's hard to pinpoint how White Widows Pact does it, but every musical element on this album bears the distinct mark of a contrasting style. On the other hand, White Widows Pact's guitar solos hint at an awareness of scales gleaned from listening to King Diamond records, a musicality that most hardcore bands shun.
In blending these styles together until the lumps are smoothed out, the band gives True Will a seamless quality. And because the album presents itself without pretense, frontman David Castillo's lyrics cut that much deeper. On opening track "Landlord", Castillo (the co-owner of Brooklyn venue Saint Vitus Bar) rails against the owner of his tenement-slum apartment—a conventional enough target for hardcore-grade retaliation, but Castillo adds considerable dimension by casting the villain of the song as a clergyman.
Where Castillo follows the aggrieved, me-against-the-world hardcore model, he leans towards ambiguity where the majority of his peers would spell things out in the most obvious ways. The veteran narrator of "Thirteen Years of War", for example, harbors anger at a man in a suit. Castillo never elaborates on who that man is, or how literal he's being when he sings that the man "lives next door." With the music clanging away at full force, the songs become that much more powerful for what Castillo doesn't say.
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