Lickity Split

Does too much modern hardcore come in the sloppily played, too-fast variety for you? Want something more in line with the genre's hot, tight origins? Washington D.C.'s Lickity Split feels your pain, and has made an LP that could have been released, with great pride, by D.C. label Dischord when it branched out past singles circa 1982/1983. Of course, it doesn't hurt that ex-Minor Threat bassist Brian Baker of Bad Religion was enlisted to produce this with Gray Matter's leader Geoff Turner, and Baker adds transforming lead-breaks right out of the first Adolescents LP that add pungent spice to the basic fast-punk (not thrash) soup stock. But even without such old connections, on songs such as "Gas and Matches," Lickety Split rocks like the mid-tempo, mid-period Scream, Marginal Man, and Government Issue used to, with wild fury yet never at such breakneck pace that one can't feel the big beat. - by Jack Rabid, Big Takeover