Union 13
Symptoms of Humanity
Disaster
There's something curiously comforting that sparks within the aural cluster bomb that is Symptoms of Humanity, and it's not just the fiercely plucked acoustic arpeggios that begin this brief-but-boisterous album and shimmer intermittently throughout an otherwise decibel-busting effort. A breathless pace dutifully maintained by the Eastlos straight-edge trio (who blister through the most brutal hardcore found outside an Iraqi insurrection) somehow relaxes your mind despite its guitar grinds and machine-gun drums. Similarly soothing are the shouts of chief guitarist/writer José Mercado, whose howl-a-heartbeat singing style is so ruthless in its rancor that it could, in the wrong hands, be effectively used for PSYOP operations. What makes Symptoms of Humanity so reassuring, notwithstanding the jackhammer-on-eardrums music, are Union 13's usual excellent letters, articulate diatribes assailing oil-inspired wars (the grandiosely apocalyptic “No Borders, No Boundaries”), brain-frying multinationals (“Manipulation, Globalist Deeds” should warrant the group a call from Ashcroft for merely thinking it) and pretty much anything else lulling the masses into suicidal complacency. “All our dreams have disappeared/Because political games control destiny,” Mercado growls on “Todos Nuestros Sueños,” one of three tracks en español on Symptoms of Humanity. “It's time to unite and say, 'No more—we want to live free with justice and peace.'” Such psalm-like prose serves as a vigorous tonal tonic for the maladies plaguing the world today, and Union 13's harsh music provides the best chaser any radical could ever dream.
