If Hope Dies

If hope dies, what’s left? Would you jump? Would you give up and take the easy way out? Can you lie down and let this gift go?

To get into this review properly I felt I needed to see that which is based in hope. In a western world we are far too removed from the point where only hope is left. I availed myself of the opportunity to go somewhere in this world where, for some, hope is indeed all there is. And if hope dies… so do they.

I’m in Cambodia, I can look out the window and I can see the faces and leave them behind. The first song starts off echoy and mono. The moment of decision is upon you… what will you decide? Shall the spirit move on to the land of dust and wind or will you rip back and slam into life face first? Because that’s what If Hope Dies just did. This band just showed up and are pounding you back out of your dream. Can you look into the face of the child with no shoes, no clean clothes, see their eyes and tell yourself that your life is more real. Do you even know what hope means?

Track 2, the album pounds on. Poverty and exploitation pass me by. This song rips; I feel perspective starting to land around me! What are my dreams even conceived of over here? Commercials of impoverished kids with random celebrities flick through my mind as I look on the lives of those I only new on TV. The aliens have indeed come and I believe they can’t truly see what I am with out their magic sunglasses. Intensity! Track 3 – So it goes… the contrast is inexplicable. The song has a fast devastating pace and the ideas we have fall apart. What you thought you knew ceases to have root. This is life as it was. This is the raw… you live or you die.

Track 4 – The Hungry Ghost… What defines hunger and even ghosts indeed have fallen into question. One can be such a thing and still live on. I look upon those that survive on will alone; hope is that which raises their heads. The resonation of the song and the idea ripple through. Track 5 – A prayer to Afflict the Comfortable… is what passes my lips. The experience, the sights, the smells, the feel of the heat and dust settle in. Your centre moves and you are not what you once were. I hear a massive significance. The song is true. It holds the wake up call. Listen and become more real!

Track 6 – The Taker Thunderbolt… lands and you get crushed. You absorb and let the smile of pure lightness take you away. Your heart pumps with the thunder of the song. Understanding is beginning to settle in. You begin to look beyond the obvious. Consciousness fills in what was hidden before. Under the dirt there is something more pure then anything that can be conceived of in a land where we use the word ‘hope’ followed by ‘the bus comes on time!!’. Who is truly dirty?

Track 7 – Cursus Honororum … My sudden self regret is underlined by the sadness I’ve found with in the song. Is what I see a reflection of my own self? What I hear and see have become my own reflection. Where is my hope within? I have seen it in others… would I recognize that which is not within myself?

I have reached understanding! At 3:20 of track 8 an amazing riff is dropped like a bomb. The delusion has been completely shattered and clarity sets in. Track 9 – Let Freedom Ring… and bask in the glory of new self knowledge. I can look around and see what many consider to be the lesser qualities of human life and rejoice in the life itself.

I took this album on a journey and it in turn provided me with something I didn’t expect. The album is relentless and it’s that quality that shifted me. If the music had let up, I would not have come to the place I am. You want to know what this album is like? All I will say is that I had to change the line below from ‘we’ to ‘I’. If Hope Dies… significant.

Hope is all I ever had!  [ END ]

Track Listing:

01. Shop Till You Drop
02. Roddy Piper’s Magic Sunglasses
03. So It Goes
04. The Hungry Ghost
05. A Prayer To Afflict The Comfortable
06. The Taker Thunderbolt
07. Cursus Honororum
08. Sugar, Free Donuts
09. Let Freedom Ring (From The Taco Liberty Bell)
10. Who Died And Made Us King?

Run Time: 40:51