The notable elements of hardcore act Paint It Black’s third record, New Lexicon, are few and far between. Noisy and moderately pleasing atmospherics are littered throughout the record (often tacked on like afterthought codas to tracks) that afford Lexicon a slightly unsettling – if all too inconsistent – mood. The show kicks off with high-pitched and subtly increasing guitar squall on “The Ledge,” before vocalist/lyricist Dan Yemin delivers Lexicon’s most winning couplet: “He says he wants to get better/ But first he has to get a little sicker”; talk about spending yourself too early. After two minutes of not being able to decide which standard hardcore drum tempo is best, “We Will Not” envelops itself in meditative static drums and echoing, chorused pitches; “Missionary Position” doesn’t get interesting until the group gets submissive and dissonant, and the ridiculously named “White Kids Dying of Hunger” plays out somewhat like Minor Threat’s “In My Eyes” backwards, beginning with the (now) staid thrashing bullshit and riding out a propulsive backbeat. Minor Threat did it better, of course, but the conceit is appreciated.
Despite this slight sonic progressivism, Yemin and his gang of ’90s emo mainstays (including past members of Lifetime, Kid Dynamite, and Good Riddance) are firmly rooted in the trappings of their genre to an artistically limiting effect. Tempos change, the bass is way too loud, the drummer’s pretty fast, vocals are absurdly barked to project a sense of ‘urgency’ – you get the idea, and you’ve heard it before way too many times. As usual, the lyricism is dull, dumb, and (surprise!) vaguely political, with lines like “You’re not living in the real world/ It means nothing to you” sounding less like a call to arms and more like a father yelling at his son at the dinner table.
Even more embarrassing is when Paint It Black attempt to sneak a melodically populist framework into their songs. “Past Tense, Future Perfect” (really?) starts out like almost every other song on this record before Yemin lets rip a couple of tune-challenged but note-specific rallying cries, as the rest of the band breaks into a groove that wouldn’t sound out of place on the main stage of the Warped Tour. Even worse is the record’s closer, “Shell Game Redux,” in which the boys break into a backing chorus of “whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh”s, as if to make a final attempt to court an audience that is too busy still listening to NOFX and old Rancid records. The record might be named New Lexicon, but, except for the all too few deviations, Paint It Black are merely reading from an outdated dictionary.
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