Kennedy’s Other Failures EP is Brutal — Just the Way I Like It.

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Kennedy is a band that picked up the pieces of my favourite local Montreal hardcore acts that I saw in my time as part of the scene. With members from bands that I spent a large part of my youth watching at shows and hanging out, Kennedy is a powerhouse of hardcore punk that sees matured musicians pushing a brutal beatdown into your ears.

The Other Failures EP balances the album with two short brutal tracks up top and then moves into two longer tracks with more structured movements, then the album ends with an electronic track featuring vocalist Matt Savage’s screams intermittently and almost unintelligibly scattered about. Kennedy moves effortlessly between sections in their longer songs Enable/Disable and Rose City. The latter beginning with eerie guitars and vocals reminiscent of La Dispute, then moving into the rest of the song which is clearly influenced by Poison The Well only to take on a build-up and eventual breakdown.

On Other Failures, one might say that Kennedy matures across the record, but that would imply that the opening shorter songs feature no growth for the musicians and that is just plain false. With the cumulative experience behind the boys in this band repurposed toward a newer sound, the brutality and heaviness of the opening two tracks go through their own movements and never look back. Hate Crimes revisits the opening riff in its final moments, but with variations to it keep it new and unpredictable. This is the comfort in a Kennedy record for me; everything is new all the time and it sounds fucking great. Van Smash achieves a similar effect as Hate Crimes in that it is short, brutal and doesn’t let up for a second.

A final thing to note is that Kennedy uses samples of home videos and atmospheric noises that seem hand-recorded with a phone or mobile device. I normally would find these clips distracting and unnecessary, but here they definitely find their place in the five tracks of the EP.

EP Tracklist:

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1. Hate Crimes
2. Van Smash
3. Enable/Disable feat. Nathan Zorn and Keenan Pylychaty of FallCityFall
4. Rose City
5. It Is Here

Fun stuff:

Nathan Zorn and Keenan Pylychaty of FallCityFall are on Enable/Disable!

Also Recommended:

I recommend if you like The Chariot, Poison The Well, FallCityFall, Sworn In, and Norma Jean.

Stand-out line:

“My demons, they call me by name.” on Enable/Disable.

Favourite track:

Hate Crimes is my favourite track, but Rose City is definitely the most developed.