 It took former Thursday and The Purpose guitarist Bill Henderson years of writing and recording his ideas on a cheap computer microphone before turning The Procedure into a full band. All this hard work and preparation have culminated in this: Rise Of New Reason . . . and it's extremely poor.
The main problem is that the torrent of non-stop shouting is more likely to give you a headache than immediate pleasure. Admittedly there is the odd moment where Rise Of New Reason looks as if it is about to perform a U-turn and give its listeners something decent to digest rather than more predictable shouting. These moments come in the form of the cleanly played and picked parts when the singing is exactly that - singing. Unfortunately for The Procedure and their expectant audience these moments are few and far between.
I know a lot of people will be reading this and thinking 'hang on a minute, most of the hardcore scene is built around shouting rather than singing pretty parts'. True, but even with bands as heavy as the almighty Converge and A Life Once Lost the vocals share elements with more melodic singing styles, such as variations in pitch and expression . . . even if the actual words are incomprehensible for the most part. It is easy to see The Procedure have tried hard just from listening to Rise Of New Reason - even if it is a far cry from half decent - but taken as a whole they have shaped a record that is nowhere near as good as it ultimately should or could be. If you are looking to buy a first-class CD of a similar nature, I'd suggest you check out Protagonist's Hope And Rage, also new from Blackout!
I'd like to see The Procedure get together in the near future and release something truly great that will hopefully extinguish people's memory of this mishap. There are a couple of half decent moments on this disc - Burned Beyond Recognition and Exquisite Massacre come to mind - and with these strengths exploited, The Procedure might be on to a winning formula. Certainly not this time though. :: Graham Drummond | 
