Ask around and you'll hear everyone having an opinion about Kickback: the older guys will always be saying nostalgically how much harder the band was in the past, the younger kids will be jocking the band and saying how hard they are, and a lot of people will call Kickback just a bunch of fools or will simply be hating the band. Whatever you think of it, Kickback managed to get their name out and never gave a fuck about your opinion anyway.
It took nine years since the last album before No Surrender was released, that's a long time, even longer than the average career of kids in hardcore. In the meantime Kickback had been cancelling shows, playing fucked up shows, causing trouble, changing line ups, causing kids to cause trouble and luckily, playing some shows which were beyond hard! So, it's not a big surprise that to some Kickback became somewhat of a parody, instead of a band to really take serious.
However, one should not forget that this French band is one of Europe's longest existing hardcore bands, being around since 1991. Before releasing the, now classic, album Forever War, they already released two demos, a 7" and a full lenght. Also taking into consideration that Kickback's singer Stéphan released on his label Hardway records bands like Bulldoze, All Out War and Confusion, it is clear that Kickback has meant a lot to the (European) hardcore scene.
But now it was about time to let music speak for itself again, so let's talk music. With every new album Kickback succeeded to evolve as a band. The Cornered album was more of a classic NYHC album, Forever War became more of a crossover album mixing classic NYHC with metal and the Les 150 Passions Meurtrières album took the nihilistic, sick approach a step further. So what about the new one?
Never Surrender definitely is not a reunion album, going back to the early days, but is a logic continuation of Les 150 Passions Meurtrières. Never Surrender is a more complex album, adding some new elements to the well known Kickback sound. I'm hearing some people saying how Kickback added black metal riffs to their songs, could be, but this basically is still a hardcore band, which you might put in the same category with bands like Integrity, Starkweather, Ringworm, All Out War or Catharsis. I'm hearing the same rhythms than on the previous release, but additionaly to this, I hear a lot of noise and dissonant guitars. There's a good combination of compact, fast songs with some lengthier, drawn out songs. The vocals became even more high pitched, which all ads up the tension and sick athmosphere of this album. It's hard, it's mean, it's aggressive, let there be no doubt about that, but due to these new elements in the music this will never be my favourite Kickback album. And not to confuse you, that's a good thing, cause if it was, it would probably just mean that they recycled their old stuff. Here, they really took a step forward and extended their musical limits.
