There are two male teachers in the elementary school I teach at. Both dress differently than you’d expect an elementary school teacher to dress. One dons baggy, hip-hop style clothing and looks eerily similar to Kevin Federline. The other routinely forgets to comb his hair in the morning before school and wears a small shirt and slim-fitting jeans to work at least twice a week. Both have visible tattoos that they don’t bother covering up. John and I are two different guys and have two different teaching styles. One is the hip-hop guy and the other is the emo/indie/alternative/etc. guy and most could no doubt tell the difference just by looking at us. Ironically enough, our classroom personalities mirror our respective tastes.
Going with the theme of aesthetics, bandana guys in oversized sports jerseys shouting hardcore is something I’ve never really had an appreciation for. It makes enough sense; both styles are often gritty and intensely lyrical at their core. It just doesn’t look or sound right though. Kind of like John at a Black Cross show spitting the words of Rob Pennington back in his face. It’s amusing for a few minutes, but more awkward the longer he’s there.
Furious Styles are the latest to try and bring the street to the suburbs. Once the initial thought of “Wow, these dudes are rapping over bro-core” gets by you, Furious Styles comes off as Rob Van Winkle pretending to be Freddy Cricien. On “Unfadeable”, a track that sounds like a cross between the early work of Saliva and something you might hear at a DARE concert, the band tries to capture the essence of both genres and clumsily trips over an unnecessary guitar solo and ridiculously masculine rhyming on its way to the end of the cut. Credit Furious Styles for trying to be innovative in a staling hardcore scene at least (if you can call modifying a horrible late 90s trend being innovative). The ultimate death of Life Lessons is that the hip-hop undermines the hardcore to the point of near farce. Proving once again, just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you necessarily should.
