Candy are a hardcore band from the US and this is their third album.
It’s Inside You is the 31-minute follow up to 2022’s Heaven Is Here. On their new record Candy push a vision for hardcore that bursts beyond its typical genre trappings in key places.
With a slightly longer average track length than its predecessor, It’s Inside You sees Candy further expanding and developing their idiosyncratic sound. Blending hardcore and metal on the one hand, with electronics and industrial on the other, Candy have created a riot of colour, heaviness, and violence.
Candy take classic hardcore songwriting and infuse it with a sense of contemporary experimental character. A sort of combination of muscular hardcore and digital dance floor aggression. Couple this with an emotive foundation and you have a record that both punishes and energises.
Certain songs put more emphasis into different aspects of the Candy sound than others. For example, Short Circuit is basically an old-school hardcore brute and songs like Terror Management and Silent Collapse are crushing odes to Nails-style belligerence. At the other end of their range, closing duo Dancing to the Infinite Beat and Hypercore both bring the electronics to the fore. Between these extremes lies a spectrum of songs that adopt a hardcore-meets-electronics approach that is tailored to the individual needs of the individual song, (exemplified by Love Like Snow, which probably inhabits the middle ground between the two end points the best). That’s not even to mention the metal and industrial influences, both of which infect the material at various points, to good effect.
It’s Inside You is an enjoyable record. My only complaint, (and it’s relatively minor), is that the band don’t go far enough. The best songs are the ones that truly push their sound into intriguing territories that blur the line between the various influences. The songs that are based mostly on the hardcore template are fine, but it’s the ones that firmly inject industrial and electronic elements into the mix that really showcase what Candy are capable of.
It’s Inside You is an engaging mashup of elements of bands like Slipknot, Full of Hell, Igorrr, Ministry, The Armed, Madball, and Genghis Tron. Candy have produced an enjoyable album that’s perfect for either the mosh pit or the gym.
Highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 