Album Review

Olde Tyme Hardcore starts with a clip from the '70s hockey movie that gave Slapshot their band name. (The title is actually a triple pun: hockey, the touristy Revolutionary War-era kitsch of the band's native Boston, and the fact that this kind of old-school hardcore was entirely out of fashion are all being referenced here.) From that opening, the band blasts through nine furious slabs of straight-edge fury with the wild-eyed abandon of true believers tempered with a bit of wistfulness. There's a hint of nostalgia not just on the title track, but on the album's centerpiece track, a fiery cover of SS Decontrol's "Get It Away," arguably the best Boston straight-edge single. Singer Jack Kelly disbanded Slapshot a day after the release of this album, after over 13 years as one of Boston's premier hardcore bands, and that "end of an era" sense hangs over this entire album. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi