Citizen of Nothing by 430 Steps: Review

 

by Ben Fitts

Smacking your ears like a fist holding a roll of quarters, the Orlando-based hardcore unit 430 Steps hold very little back on their 2020 album Citizen of Nothing. The album blends a sound that feels rooted in NYHC, despite the band’s Floridian roots, with inflections of crossover thrash and the kind of punk that could be heard on those old Punk-O-Rama compilations from Epitaph Records. The result is a pummeling, groove-oriented assault full of chunky guitar tones and rhythms that beg your legs to open up the motherfucking pit. 430 Steps may not be one of the best-known bands in the punk world at the moment, but they very may well have released one of the best hardcore albums of 2020. 

Citizen of Nothing opens with “Motivation Games”, a one-minute and eighteen-second banger that’s so catchy that you can’t help but wonder if the band perhaps played that card too early in the album. While there are other tracks in the album that hit as hard if not harder, nowhere else do 430 Steps quite achieve the same degree of raw infectiousness as is found on “Motivation Games”, although the main riff the album’s title track comes pretty damn close. Citizen of Nothing quickly changes gears, following “Motivation Games” with “Until This Day”, a high-octane speed demon of a song that forgoes the hooks of “Motivation Games” in favor of a raw power that puts the band’s thrash metal roots on fuller display than they are anywhere else on the album.

The band then splits the difference on the following track, “Serial Killer”. With the most classic hardcore sound to be heard anywhere on Citizen of Nothing, “Serial Killer” merges bombastic drumming and vocals with distinctive, well-constructed riffs which make “Serial Killer”, if perhaps not the album’s standout track, likely its best representation of what 430 Steps is all about. “Serial Killer” is then, interestingly enough, followed by “Skate Ghost Town”, the track least representative of the band’s sound. By far the tamest track on Citizen of Nothing “Skate Ghost Town” is almost a straight-ahead skate punk song with only an undercurrent of hardcore, both musically and lyrically. The result is not unlike a bastard of Cryptic Slaughter and the first Offspring album.  

This divergence is followed by the album’s title track, which makes for a well-timed return to form. A riff-driven, mid-tempo, mosh-friendly stomper, “Citizen of Nothing” stands out as one of the album’s highlights and proves itself as a strong choice for the title track, even if one can’t help but feel like it’s neither quite as strong a composition or quite as snappily titled as the album’s opener, “Motivation Games”. Next, 430 Steps go bilingual on the Spanish-language track “Cronicas De Un Payaso”, a solid-tempo, metallic leaning track much in the same vein as the title track preceding it and whose strongest moment its crazed, high-speed, and brief outro. Citizen of Nothing is closed by the track “Wasting Time”, which is another high point of the album. Ending on one of the strongest riffs on Citizen of Nothing, “Wasting Time” was a wise choice for the closer, sending this eight-track, sixteen-minute adrenaline shot of an album out in style. 

Citizen Of Nothing by 430 Steps can be both streamed and purchased on Bandcamp HERE

Ben Fitts is a writer, musician, and zinester from New York City. He is the author of over thirty published works of short fiction, nineteen of which were later included in his debut collection, My Birth And Other Regrets. His music writing has been featured in such outlets as The Sludgelord, Pioneer Valley Underground, Metal Temple, and Asphyxium Zine, among others. He currently lives in Brooklyn, where he plays guitar in the indie rock band War Honey, makes zines, and puts too much hot sauce on everything.