On the Outside are a hardcore punk rock group on Thorp Records. While the record label itself has some questionable more commercially geared "modern hardcore" and metalcore releases, gladly this is not one of them. On The Outside play metal influenced hardcore, through still very much rooted in the old school traditions and values of bands like Agnostic Front and Madball. In fact, this album sounds extremely similar to the legendary Aussie group Mindsnare's The Death. The album is full of catchy hooks, stylish breakdowns, hardcore vocals (with a distorted metal edge) and mid-paced punk rock. The thing that really saved this band is the amount of variation they throw into their songs - choosing to keep tracks short, sweet and relatively unpredictable. Also, unlike a lot of newer hardcore groups, the breakdowns on this album are used sparingly and with haste - there's drawn out chugga-chugga two minute wankoff in the middle of every song.
There are two tracks that are notably weaker than the rest of the album. That aside, highlights like "Broken Never Hopeless," "Save My Soul" and "Consumed" make this a solid release - nothing exceptional, nothing exciting, but certainly above a good portion of over-saturated metalcore tripe, sounding much more like Madball and the Snare than Terror and Hatebreed (which is definitely a good thing, do we need another bloody Hatebreed clone!?).
The album ain't bad, but it's nothing to get too excited over. Buy Mindsnare's The Death and you will see what I mean.
