I'm a young man. I missed the hey-day of early eighties hardcore, sneaking into shows at the Mabuhay Gardens and getting someone else's blood in my eyes. I've heard, via documentaries, of the rebellion against Reagan and the Cold War-era Leave It To Beaver Americana, and I'm angry that I wasn't alive and breathing at the time to throw up a middle finger alongside Henry Rollins.

It's said that the culture burned out almost as quickly as it started - since there's only so much that could've been done with two chords (five if you were at a Bad Brains show) and a mission - but I do my best to avoid bullshit when I see it. The poster child of punk rock will exist (albeit perhaps a bit more thematically watered-down and aimed at Hot Topic shoppers) as long as there are authority figures and until science finds a way to circumvent puberty; it's big brother, Hardcore, will continue to be the suicide bomber, willing to lay its ass on the line and rail against the things that the rest of us try to tune out. It's true that the urgency which once gave such movements a pulse is generally lacking today, but now - whether it be thanks to the current cultural landscape or the fact that the kids that were too young to know that Hardcore was pronounced D.O.A. in 1986 are now writing the soundtracks to their own history - there are tremors of a new movement.

I first heard echoes of footsteps in the general direction of Hardcore's halcyon days with the 2006 release of Fucked Up's seminal Hidden World, the first Truly Important Punk Album in God Knows How Long, and now with New Lexicon, another gem from the long-forgotten Jade Tree label, Paint It Black have given further weight to a renewed promise and relevancy of Hardcore, upholding a proud tradition without being derivative or treading in tired waters.

Paint It Black's sound is classic, borrowing the fury of Black Flag as well as the social consciousness of Minor Threat, and managing to inhabit a unique textural space by using strikingly clean production and unnerving studio sound effects to stretch out palpable tension when necessary. Hell, Dan Yemin's gutsy bellowing even manages to sound a little bit like Rollins himself, and while the group might lose points with finicky purists for their use of melody in a smattering of the tracks, the doses in "Past Tense, Future Perfect" and "Shell Game Redux" aren't there to cater to the hated commercial vampires; they are embers of genuine hope, and their existence is one of the group's greatest strengths.

It's the dualism of Paint It Black's passionate anger and their optimism that makes New Lexicon succeed as much as it does, and Yemin's rawness in tracks like "New Folk Song" and "Severence" coexist peacefully with the determined optimism their lyrics reveal. The album's abruptness (fifteen tracks race by in just over thirty minutes) serves the group well, as it prevents their simple, urgent attack from becoming stale, and while it may not be another Damaged, it is an effort sewn of seeds of the same kind of passion - and as deeply rooted in the troubles of its own time and place - to be a worthy addition to that album's proud and storied legacy.