The California-based Future Primitive play raw, promising straight-edge hardcore, the kind that seems to recall both the early tendencies of 7 Seconds and Minor Threat but also its modern expressions like emotion and structure. Their Expression Sessions demo here, while not incredible, acknowledges that well.

What really prevents the band from delivering an impressionable mark so early on is that I don't believe they've fully realized their songwriting skills -- the songs are good, but they're not that good. You can, however tell that one day they're likely to be that good, especially in more thought out representations like the opening title track, "White Noise," and "The Great Divide," all of which clock in more or less around 3 minutes, practically epics for what the band is playing. They keep your interest throughout the respective durations though, and "White Noise" gets a little ambitious with subtle Bad Brains-esque upstrokage towards its finish, the same making brief appearances in "California." Success seems quite possible if and when the band expands on that.

Loose gang vocals are interspersed throughout, and it's nice that you can hear quite at least a little bit of diversity in those gang vocals as opposed to a half-dozen scruffy 20-some-odd-year-old white males. Basically, it's good to see a band taking little fine details in a genre that's hard to indiviualize yourself in and even getting creative with them.

The band keeps calling it a demo, but it's quite decent sounding and fully packaged for such -- a fairly decent EP that seems to promise so much more, however, and I guess in that sense, yes, it's a demonstration. The evidence will be even stronger in the future though, I'd imagine.

Future Primitive
White Noise
Out of Breath
California