Formed in 1988, Integrity were the cornerstone of the Cleveland hardcore scene in the early '90s.
Fronted by the notorious Dwid Hellion, Integrity has released some of hardcore and metalcore's most influential albums throughout their near three decade lifespan. Integrity has featured some big names throughout their history, with members from acts like Hatebreed, In Cold Blood, Midnight, Mushroomhead, Ringworm and Terror, to name a few. Most of the band's discography fits comfortably into the metallic hardcore niche, so it wasn't until much later in the band's career (notably 2010's The Blackest Curse) that the band was accepted into the archives. Despite the amount of material the band has put out over the years, their third full length album, Seasons in the Size of Days, which came out back in 1997, remains a personal favorite.
The band's previous full length album, 1995's Systems Overload, saw Integrity beginning to focus on a darker style of hardcore, with tons of metallic influence on lead guitar work and songwriting. In 1996 the band dropped a bomb in the form of a short EP titled Humanity is the Devil, showing the band hooking further into the realms of the metallic, while remaining true to their abrasive hardcore punk roots, as tracks like “Vocal Test” and “Abraxas Annihilation” display. Seasons in the Size of Days continued that trend of mixing darkened hardcore and metallic elements, but the result is drastically different than anything the band had put out before. It's not that the musical element is completely different, it's just that Integrity added some strange, atmospheric pieces in the form of melodic, introspective guitars, samples and noise.
The album boasts a fifty-two minute playing time, but when you look closely at the individual tracks, you find a different animal altogether. “Burning Flesh Children to Mist” clocks in at over twenty-seven minutes and the only other two tracks with any substantial length, “Millenial Reign” and “Heaven Inside Your Hell”, clock in around five minutes a piece. What's important about those numbers, is that this comprises the weird and noisy aspects of the album. “Burning Flesh Children to Mist” only showcases minimalistic percussion and audio from The Jonestown Death Tape by Rev. Jim Jones, while “Heaven Inside Your Hell” is just piano notes, minor guitar licks and breathy spoken vocals and “Millenial Reign” features heavy power chords followed by a melodic guitar line backed by squealing pigs and chanting.
If you take out all of that weird, experimental shit out of the album, you're left with about fifteen minutes of one of the greatest metallic hardcore albums of all time. Kicking off with “Rise”, which features heavily distorted hardcore punk riffing, rollicking drums and Dwid's trademark torn-throat screams. It's easily the hardest hitting and fastest offering on the album, but tracks like “Sarin” and “ATF Assault” come close, marrying fast and grating hardcore riffs with a dose of metallic galloping. Perhaps what makes Seasons in the Size of Days so potent is the constant variation; not just with the whole “we're going to be weird for the sake of being weird” parts. “Diseased Prey Within Casing” shows the band going for a mid tempo, plodding style that just oozes with seething anger.
Integrity has a lot of really good albums in their back catalog, but Seasons in the Size of Days is possibly their most varied and innovative. This album helped set the tone for the brazenly heavy 2000 and the moodiness and metallic riffing on The Blackest Curse. Sure, over the half the album is abstract weirdness, but it makes the rest of the album feel so much heavier and more abrasive. Seventeen years after its release and Dwid and company have yet to come close to the darkened, metallic opus that is Seasons in the Size of Days. This is an absolutely essential metallic hardcore album.