Album Review: All The Ways You Let Me Down by Candy Hearts


The jaded old punks will tell you that punk is dead. That modern bands aren't important anymore. That the scene today doesn't mean crap compared to the Spirit of '76 or '84 or whenever. DC hardcore, NY hardcore, California hardcore, British oi!, nothing today will ever mean as much as those scenes did. But they're wrong. They're dead wrong.
From 1998 through 2000, the American Hockey League had what was known as the Empire Division. It consisted mostly of New York teams (hence "Empire"), and the not-even-from-America Hamilton Bulldogs. I like to make the case that now is the time to bring back the Empire Division. There's more teams in New York than there were in the late 90s, and for some reason years and years of AHL realignment leaves both Charlotte, NC, and Rochester, NY with Western Conference teams. Then again, there was also one year where the entire Empire Division was in the West (beforehand it was an unbalenced setting of 3 in the East and 1 in the West). Rochester, Albany, Syracuse, and Binghamton are still around, plus now you have Utica, and a new team in Glens Falls, since the Phantoms bolted for (Le)high(Valley)er grounds (that was painful but necessary). This new team is the former Abbotsford Heat, affiliated with Calgary, which should make for a GREAT rivalry with the nearby Utica Comets, affiliated with Vancouver. But lets get to the point here. The Heat need a rebrand, and I have just the idea for them. I hope you're listening, Flames.
Into my inbox pinged the link. No body text, subject line only "best 14 minutes of my life." I looked around the office, waited for my bosses to disappear behind their closed doors, dragged my browser around so the YouTube video window was nestled into the bottom right of my their monitor, and positioned my text editor atop it, so I could screen the images from prying eyes with a quick-fingered ALT-TAB. I hit the GO button.
A sure sign of spring possibly coming and ending the Winter That Will Not End, the NHL's trade deadline passed today at 3PM. Since I have been asked multiple times about my whereabouts wrt: writing on here (this is actually false, Jer just gave me shit for not putting up the Album of the Year list I was working on), I figured I'd make my not-so-grand return by breaking down some of the more important deals of the past day or two.