The hope conspiracy is a band I heard for years and never got around to listening to, and now I can see why they have had such a lasting impact on the hardcore scene. Their unique style of strong, heavy riffs and deep drumming goes unmatched. They are able to incorporate sludgy metal styles and southern style riffing into their style of hardcore while also making some fast-paced, ripping songs like “The Prophets and Doom." The one thing that was consistently impressing me was the drums. The drums take center stage with this band and never cease to be on fire or explosive, like on tracks “A Struggle for Power” or "Confusion/Chaos/Misery." The drummer is able to command and lead the band with ease with his punchy and heavy drumming style. Which makes me think of how good they are at slowing things down in their songs to build them back up to create a heavy atmosphere through the thunderous drums. The guitars have such a nice heavy grit and aggression that matches with drums so well, like on “Those Who Gave Us Yesterday” or “The West is Dead." The bass playing on here carries a thick distinctive distorted feel to them that just gives the songs a dark and moody feel to them, like on “Of a Dying Nation." Now the vocals are lean, mean, and harsh yet super clean and easy to understand. “Shock by shock” does a good job of pulling the instruments back to let the vocals really come through and show the raw projection power of their vocalist. I will say the songs can feel a bit repetitive at times, but they are able to do that repetition and make it feel very hypnotic, so you dont really realize that it feels repetitive. The production on this album is crunchy and dense and just has so much weight to it. There never was a point on the album where the quality of the production dipped. They took grunge, doom, sludge, and hardcore to create a unique sound that is hard to replicate, which has given them their lasting power all the years later.