They may have gone their separate ways in 2011, but Haste The Day aren’t fading away quietly. One successful Indiegogo campaign and four years later, they’re back with Coward, a deliciously noisy helping of impassioned metal.
Vocals are provided by both Jimmy Ryan, the original frontman, and his successor Stephen Keech, and they’re full of the spirit that flung HTD onto the same musical plane as Every Time I Die and Atreyu.
Begin bounces between madcap hardcore and rousing choruses, and that frenetic, stripped-back sound sticks around until slicker production is pulled out for the melodic World. The backers didn’t just get an album for their money, either – a lucky few were picked by Keech to join him and record gang vocals in his church.
Coward is the definition of going out on a high – it maintains its energy throughout, deftly switching between rhythms and tempos to the point that it plays like a catalogue of the bands’ different sonic personas. The Final Gnaw is a crashing, tempo-switching, screaming beast that makes sure the band won’t be forgotten./o:p
