Canadian-bred Struck by Truth show a marked improvement with their self-released debut full-length, Seeds. The band's CD-R demo, press for which was done only a handful of months before Seeds' release, was confused and a bit directionless. Seeds, however, is an interesting concoction of punk rock, hardcore, and metal.

Most certainly, the band cannot be labeled metalcore; the tempos are often too fast and unrelenting, the riffs are metallic but not to "that" point, and there's nary a breakdown to be found on the disc; frankly, Seeds is too raw and based around punk rock to be referred to as anything else in a (barely) stronger context, but at the same time, it's intense -- the band's lead vocalist screams his lungs out every song, nearly every second, sometimes hitting deathly lows -- and never once finds itself slipping into the silly trap of pointlessly melodic singing parts, with only one -- well executed here no less -- fallback into chug-chug laziness, all the whilst using a simplified lyrical base to address the usual political concerns of materialism and nations kept in fear. This isn't to mention strange time signatures in places ("Unified by a Caged Wheel"). In this sense, shades of Ed Gein, both musically and lyrically pop up here and there, but of course, not quite near that band's technical prowess. "No Thing Is Nothing" is the most most memorable of the tracks, especially with its abrupt chorus growling chants of "WE MUST FIGHT BACK!"

Seeds is a surprisingly solid disc -- rounded out by an above par recording courtesy of Greg Dawson (Moneen) -- from a bunch of, at this point, absolute unknowns. And though Struck by Truth shamelessly use the opening riffs of Avenged Sevenfold's "Unholy Confessions" for their own intro to "Part of the Equation," it's forgiveable, because Seeds is surely anything but G'NR tributing.

MP3s
Unmarked Grave
Part of the Equation
No Thing Is Nothing
Unified by a Caged Wheel