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Our take: We carried a demo tape from Canada’s Blood Ties a while back, and now they’re back with their debut 10-song EP. If I had to sum up Blood Ties’ sound, I’d say they sound like music made by and for people who consider the Negative Approach EP the purest and greatest expression of hardcore. It’s not that Blood Ties is imitating Negative Approach (in fact, I occasionally get a whiff of something that reminds me more of United Blood or Siege), but rather they are summoning the same muse. It’s hardcore stripped down to its bare essentials, that takes loud, fast, and pissed to its undiluted Platonic ideal, with only the bare skeleton of English oi! to give it the faint outline of musical shape. If you share this philosophy on hardcore—I do, even if there’s plenty of room in my listening diet for other things—I can’t imagine you wouldn’t think this rips… it’s raw, pissed, fast, and perfectly executed in every way. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but sometimes what you need is good old fashioned meat and potatoes.