REVIEW: The Home Team – The Crucible of Life [2024]
Artist: The Home Team
Album: The Crucible of Life
Well, it’s that time again—yes, time for a new record from the Pacific Northwest’s resident pioneers of pent-up sexual energy pop-punk-turned-post-hardcore The Home Team—but more broadly, that time of the year where I review my token no-screaming, no-breakdown release. Since their debut, The Home Team have grown exponentially, earning them a ticket to world-wide attention, touring and notoriety. If the jump from Better Off to Slow Bloom was the band hitting their stride then the jump from The Crucible of Life is, in a word, explosive. The choruses are bigger, dancier and catchier. The drumming is punchier, the guitars louder and more boisterous and the lyrics—well, yeah, hornier, but also delivered perfectly across the board. The Crucible of Life finds itself, ironically enough, at a figurative crossroads—it’s hard to say whether or not its a heavy pop record or a poppy heavy record, and, honestly either way it doesn’t matter, because its excellence transcends the need for genre classification. The Crucible of Life is The Home Team’s magnum opus (for now, at least), and fans of everything from two-stepping and bow-throwing to bouncing and…well, the other verb that starts with “b” should do themselves a solid and hit play.
If it’s been said once it’s been said fifty times, but The Home Team craft nothing but certified ass-shakers, and this has never been more evident than it is on The Crucible of Life. From the first verse of “Turn You Off” and through the highlights of singles “Brag” and “Loud,” the band’s ability to distill pure energy into a track has never been better. The bouncy, raucous percussion that defines ultra-catchy “Overtime” and the record’s resident heavy hitter “Hell” sees Daniel Matson at the top of his game, meanwhile “Somebody Else’s Face” is a more tasteful and taciturn display of drumming that allows melancholic fretwork and groovy bass to take center stage. What is arguably the record’s most well-rounded and overall best track, “Love When You’re Used” sees riveting drumming create what is one of the most dancy, ass-shakingest (shut up you know what I mean) choruses 2024 has seen to date. Throughout The Crucible of Life, The Home Team draw in subtle influences from heavier music to lend punch to the otherwise neon-tinted pop-paradise that defines their proclivities, and while some songs lean heavier into the poppy side of things (“All Squeezed Out,” for example), the songs where just enough punchy drumming and groove-tinted fretwork shines through are where the band truly reach their career peak—and that’s good news, because that’s about 90% of the record’s overall run time. The Home Team’s effort on The Crucible of Life is an intergenre instrumental powerhouse that stands to appeal to deathcore kids like me in the same way it can appeal to the pop-loving masses, which in and of itself is an extremely rare phenomenon.
The Home Team wouldn’t be complete, however, without the efforts of their vocalist Brian Butcher. Earning his stripes over the last several records, The Crucible of Life stands as his most lyrically and tonally cohesive and adventurous record to date. Covering everything from energetic, pent-up, sex-addled romance hymns to bitter, rage tinted anthems, Butcher’s range is uncontested here. “Love When You’re Used” is a personal favorite, straddling the line between Butcher’s lyrical extremes—but his work on “Somebody Else’s Face” is a close contender. In reality, Butcher’s work throughout the record’s entirety is marvelous and as dynamic as anyone could hope for. Just when it seems like it would difficult to top anthems like “Slow Bloom” or “Right Through Me,” Butcher gives listeners an entire album where he does exactly that.
I’m happy to admit when I’m out of my element—and when it comes to The Home Team, I’m pretty damn out of my element, but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming one of my favorite not-heavy (but still, like, a little heavy) bands over the last several years. The Crucible of Life is them at their best, which is considerable given the incredible upward trajectory that has defined their entire career to date. The only question now is that if each record has been leaps and bounds above the last…what will The Home Team’s next release look like?
9.5/10
For Fans Of: Broadside, Honey Revenge, D.R.U.G.S., Set It Off
By: Connor Welsh
