Stick To Your Guns - 'Keep Planting Flowers' - Album Review

BACKGROUND. It's only the second week of January and SharpTone Records are already lining up for a killer year, starting with the latest legendary addition to their ever-expanding roster in scene OGs Stick To Your Guns. The gents have been bouncing between labels for quite some time now, but appear to have finally found their home and the right support to drop their punching eight studio album Keep Planting Flowers. And honestly, melodic Cali hardcore just doesn't get any better than this at the moment.

BAND. Stick To Your Guns have been integral to the scene since their inception back in the early 00s, and it is fantastic to see them hit just as hard as they did back twenty years ago when the debut LP For What It's Worth premiered. Led by the charismatic Jesse Barnett since their formtion, the current lineup has been together for more than a decade now (with a minor update behind the drums), or more precisely, since the Sumerian era with those iconic Diamond (2012) and Disobedient (2015). Jump back to 2025, and Stick To Your Guns return with that same passion and drive for the unmissable Keep Planting Flowers.

ALBUM. Keep Planting Flowers is up to the point, right in your face, no bullshit release, like all hardcore albums should be. Furthermore, it shows what can be done with the genre in 2025 if the band puts some thought into song composition and arrangement instead of shoving riffs and breakdowns together for the sake of pleasing YouTube reactors and Reddit dwellers. The 10 tracks barely reach 25  minutes but that is more than enough to tell a captivating story and deliver the right message, all the while raising the heat with each consecutive rager and passionate ralying cry until the very end.

SONGS. The record starts strong with a trademark hardcore intro leading to the pit-starter 'Spineless', followed by a all familiar promo singles 'Permanent Dark', 'Invisible Rain', 'Severed Forever', and 'More Than A Witness'. The teerjerker title track gives you a chance to take a breath before punching you in the stomach with a wave of raw, unfiltered, uncontainable emotions, before suddenly jumping on the thrill ride again with 'Eats Me Up' and the somewhat surprising but absolutely brilliant conckuding collabs with Terror on 'Who Needs Who' and SeeYouSpaceCowboy... on 'H84U'. No distractions, no skips, no fillers.

FUTURE. SharpTone really are about to have a huge year and it is no surprise it is up to STYG to kickstart the party. Twenty years and eight records deep into an impactful career with major part in scene history, a cult following, and a clever switch to a suitable label hardly seems like the end is near. Sure, Stick To Your Guns can call it a day at any point and it will be a glorious send-off, but I feel (and hope) like they will continue doing what they do so bloody well for another twenty.

Stick To Your Guns - 'Keep Planting Flowers'

Country: United States

Uased: 10 January

Label: SharpTone Records

Tracklisting:

1. We All Die Anyway

2. Spineless

3. Permanent Dark

4. Invisible Rain

5. Severed Forever

6. More Than A Witness

7. Keep Planting Flowers

8. Eats Me Up

9. Who Needs Who (ft. Terror)

10. H84U (ft. SeeYouSpaceCowboy...)