Water Everywhere
Waterdown
All Riot
(Victory)
Explosive label debut rails against . . .
All Riot is the kind of pummeling disc metalcore bands have been after, finding an iron rod of metal backbone meshing fiendishly well with hardcore’s mountain-crumbling ferocity. It shows Waterdown aren’t without their flaws — saturated with Cobra Commander screaming; stab-n-grab Pantera riffing — but despite the anarchic cover image, All Riot moves concertedly and efficiently in hope of unseating . . . well, that’s the problem. Waterdown are all ammo and no target, perhaps a victim of too much Fugazi soapboxing and not knowing what all the anger’s about. Track by track you gather a general feeling of unrest concerning a limited variety of issues (complacency, authority, complacency, complacency, teamwork, complacency, complacency, their fans, authority, authority, authority) with the only implied assailants being those bonehead fans in “Moshpit Etiquette” and the armed forces (“Recruit”).
If it weren’t for its breakdown-the-walls sloganeering, you could mistake this uncannily for Christian rock (“I have my own life/I’m leaving for what is right”) and not miss a step, though you’d be rather militant by the end of it all.
— Steve Forstneger
