By Tim Lee

The poet E.E. Cummings once wrote, “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” Modern Life Is War carries on this fight in the hardcore scene, making unique records among a myriad of bands that seem hellbent on sounding exactly the same.

“Midnight in America” is a hardcore record as brilliant as it is unique. With their previous release “Witness” in 2005, Modern Life Is War had set themselves apart from the cookie-cutter hardcore sound and uber-violent mentality that the scene had become mired in in recent years. “Midnight In America” carries this tradition further as a purely hardcore record with many of its songs too sprawling and slow to be defined as “true” hardcore (and even a cover of the old folk song “Stagger Lee”) .

The lyrics on this album are laced with the requisite anger and desperation that the record’s title suggests. Vocalist Jeffery Eaton’s growl crackles in the speaker on the opening track “Useless Generation” as he proclaims, “Useless generation: I sing your song against your will / Useless generation: I am your prince of paranoia and thrills.” In a culture seemingly dominated by sensational stories of war, violence and harbingers of a coming apocalypse, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking issue with Eaton’s claims.

“Midnight In America” is an aptly titled record. A play on the Regan administration’s campaign slogan “It’s morning in America”, Modern Life Is War not only captures the true anger, desperation, and vitriol that spurred the forefathers of hardcore in the 80s, but carries all of it forward into the 21st century as a rallying cry for the current youth movement. “Midnight In America” may not sound like a hardcore record, but as Eaton puts it on the fifth track, “We don’t care what you think / we don’t care what you say / you don’t get to decide /It’s ours. Go away.”

Modern Life Is War has created a record that should-though it very well may not-become a snapshot of a generation misled into violence and war. “Midnight In America” is a perfect story of anger and disillusionment for a time when both are common feelings for the youth of this country and the world at large. Maybe Modern Life Is War isn’t Minor Threat, The Dead Kennedys or Black Flag, and perhaps “Midnight In America” won’t define a generation. However, this is 2007 and Modern Life Is War present a convincing case that it is, in fact, “Midnight In America”.

4 Stars