Throughout their few short years together, Up the Fury has boasted various members of Long Island hardcore's best of recent years: the Backup Plan, This Is Hell and Crime in Stereo. But for all that wonderful experience at hand, their first full-length, Behind Every Mind is just a painfully average hardcore album.

Like many of the band's peers, Behind Every Mind bears an unmistakable Modern Life Is War influence, but unlike, say, Life Long Tragedy or even Dead Hearts, the band fail to take it any new particular height. Opener "At the Hands of History" even carries an intro that resembles a condensed version of "By the Sea"'s, and it's decently dynamic enough, but fails to really capture the listener. The very next track, "Dude, We'd Have Like $900," has another slow, brooding opening and sounds like it could be a first track too; that's problematic, since it sort of feels like someone hit the reset button and started the album over already.

On the faster songs where the band is refraining from that midtempo approach, there's maybe one interesting moment -- maybe a little riff changeup or something -- and little to captivate otherwise. Some loose gang vocals in "Tribal Is Never a Good Idea" and a bit of repetition is "Get Gully" works, but little else does the trick.

All throughout, Jared Fagen's voice is ugly, cruel and grueling, but aside from its sheer intensity and desperation, doesn't offer enough variety to invoke a real attention-grabbing moment. The guitars sound nicely awash in constant distortion and tend to provide a nice wall of sound, though.

Behind Every Mind isn't exactly what you'll find at the bottom of the barrel, but you may have to dig a bit.