What’s to be appreciated about a band like Mil-Spec is that they don’t worry too much about chasing trends. The energy moving through their view of melodic hardcore is a very pure, heart-pounding one that makes every word behind vocalist Andrew Peden’s lyrics resound in earnest. This was pivotal in giving light to the loneliness that was 2020 when the Toronto band released their debut full-length, World House, just as the world turned inside itself during the darks days of the pandemic. Their sophomore effort, Secret Passage, is a leveled-up extension of that emotional adrenaline running through their veins. Co-produced with Glitterer and Title Fight frontman Ned Russin and mixed by trusted heavy music production auteur Arthur Rizk (Code Orange, Power Trip,) Peden, guitairists Dan Darrah and Matt Laforge, bassist Codey Thompson, and drummer Jacob Hellas navigate the tour de force of life’s most tumultuous questions as time races by in a fearless nature that always stays several steps ahead of succumbing to nihilistic pitfalls, akin to their modern day peers in Fiddlehead, Praise as well as the inspiration laid permanent by the Revolution Summer. For the most part, Secret Passage stays true to form with gorgeous riffs and rhythm cascading broad, heavy brush strokes in bright hues across darker, fractured skies. The album’s penultimate track, “Belle Époque”, is the only detour, though necessarily so. In it, Sophie Vallée (who is also Peden’s wife,) recites a spoken word tour diary entry over a cosmic experimental synth-pop beat that recounts the time Mil-Spec played Power Trip’s Evil Beat festival in Dallas. It would amount to their final time seeing the late Power Trip vocalist, Riley Gale. Though this memory forges a divergent sonic path before returning on course to conclude on “Just Our Imagination”, it’s an interesting facet to the stories Mil-Spec shout, always moving forward with an intentionality in everything they do.

Highlights: “The Days Don’t End”, “Memento”, “Belle Époque”

Mil-Spec’s Secret Passage is available now on Lockin’ Out.

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