Integrity
Those Who Fear Tomorrow (15th Anniversary Edition)
Say what you want about the band members’ personalities, but what you are holding in your hands is one of the most important hardcore milestones of all-time. Although it’s now 15 years old (an eternity in the punk subculture), every time I listen to Those Who Fear Tomorrow it sounds as urgent, dark and foreboding as I imagine it did when it was originally released on Overkill Records in 1991. Cinematic in scope and vision, Those Who Fear Tomorrow is part of an elite set of albums that actively altered the face of what followed it, and its greatness is probably better recognized now than it was a decade-and-a-half ago. But to really understand the album’s importance, it’s vital to realize where Integrity came from and the historical context surrounding the disc.
Integrity were born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1989 more out of necessity than anything else. Walter Schreifels from Gorilla Biscuits recommended the band—which at that point consisted solely of frontman/madman Dwid—to Victory Records’ owner Tony Brummel and they were signed without having ever recorded a single note. In order to record their debut, Dwid recruited guitarist Aaron Melnick from the legendary Cleveland hardcore act Diehard and Tom Brose from Confront on bass. After recording the In Contrast Of Sin 7-inch, the band were ready to record their first full-length—however, the hardcore scene couldn’t say the same.
In the early ’90s, the hardcore scene consisted mainly of clean-cut suburban youths sporting Nike Dunks and Champion hooded sweatshirts—in fact most of them looked like they were just as likely to be attending a basketball game as they were a Bold show. Lyrically, songs consisted largely of homages to straight-edge culture and clichéd (and largely meaningless) rants about “getting stabbed in the back.” Integrity changed all that. Although the band’s music certainly had a hardcore foundation, they brought in shredding guitar solos and satanic imagery worth of Slayer to the genre, the latter arriving via Dwid’s guttural but still decipherable vocals (a style than has been often imitated over the years, but never quite duplicated).
Although Integrity would go on to release 10 full-length albums and endure for 18 years, even the band members themselves would be hard up to argue that Those Who Fear Tomorrow wasn’t their crowning achievement. Recorded in a three-day span at Mars Recording Studio in Cleveland, there’s an inexplicable magic in the album, from the opener “Micha: Those Who Fear Tomorrow” to the final track “March Of The Damned.” Like all great works of art, the songs often make the listener uncomfortable. (Just look to the song “Darkness” where Dwid demonically screams, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link / Flesh so durable my razor is my only release / As your blood pours you inside out.”) But ultimately this is part of the album’s charm; part horror movie, part metal CD and all carefully configured and executed, the album didn’t just break the rules—it created a whole new set of them.
Whether today’s eyeliner-clad hardcore bands realize it or not, the influence Those Who Fear Tomorrow has had on the genre is incalculable. Not only is it arguably responsible for giving birth to the genre of metalcore, like Eve did when she bit into the forbidden apple in the garden of Eden, it opened a Pandora’s Box of evil and darkness inspired by horror acts like the Misfits and Samhain. Everyone from Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta to Darkest Hour’s Mike Schleibaum have gone on record touting the influence the album has had on them personally, and the disc probably isn’t greater acknowledged for the mere fact that so many bands have copied what Integrity created that the band’s followers have to become a reference point for gritty and gruesome hardcore.
“Call them what you want: hardcore with solos, metalcore, controversial—it doesn’t matter,” says Killswitch Engage frontman Howard Jones. “Those Who Fear Tomorrow is the blueprint for heavy underground music.” But don’t take Jones’ word for it—or mine for that manner. Take the disc out of its case, put it in your CD player and let Henry Lee Lucas’ voice beckon you into the sick and twisted world of Integrity. Whether you’ve owned one of the previous pressings of Those Who Fear Tomorrow or if this is your first time, remember, when you hear Dwid cry “Micha!” it’s all starting again.
Jonah Bayer
Music Editor, Alternative Press
November 2005