This is definitely one of best bands existing nowadays. They manage to mix metal with the emotion of pure hardcore. Chaos but solid and straight forward. The singer is screaming his lungs out of his chest. If you know eighteen visions and you don't have this album: shame on you! This album makes it worth to live and to remember why music exists. To fucking rock and dance! The Best Of contains three songs from their "No Time For Love" (Limited) 7" on Trustkill, five songs from their "Yesterday Is Time Killed" CD on Cedargate Records, two Songs from their "Lifeless" CD on Life Sentence Records, and one new song. All the songs on this CD are re-recorded to gives us the eargasms we get during listening to "Until The Ink Runs Out". So old songs with a heavy-rock-metal-emo touch! I recommend not listening to this CD if you: 1) are staying in a very small surrounding (because this music makes you move, for sure!), 2) don't have a mirror for playing air guitar, 3) on your first date with a very hot boy/girl. Some cool facts I found on their site: * We don't know what's tighter, their music or their pants.* They use the word "fist fuck" in a song.* Although called toughguys, two of them are in hair school.* Two of the guys are in Throwdown, and also two are in Bleeding Through. Ok, Buy this CD and Fucking Rock!

Love em or Hate em, Eighteen Visions are fucking talented. And in my personal opinion...fucking good. Although on "Greatest Hits" some songs are a hit and a miss (no pun intended) overall this is a solid release. The only songs I don't like are the older ones and that's not too crazy of a thing right? Jesus I didn't like my own bands older releases, but I obviously joined it. So I think old 18 V really isn't the best stuff, but the first half of this CD has some great tracks. The best is the first song, which is the newest. Anyhow overall this band is out to fuck with you. They challenge every aspect of hardcore and if you don't like it you will somehow have to deal with them cause 18 V wont be fading away anytime soon... they are probably one of the biggest bands out, and they deserve it. I like James cause he always has nice shoes.

I love it when bands put out 'best of' CDs when they never had a hit. Because you get a lot of material that usually goes out of print from their earlier releases. Plus, unless you were a die-hard must have every album fan, you will get a few songs from releases you never seemed to acquire. But in this case, with a catch. Rather than re-release, the band re-recorded. For those keeping score at home: 3 songs from "No Time For Love" 7" on Trustkill, 5 songs from "Yesterday Is Time Killed" on Cedargate Records, 2 songs from "Lifeless" on Life Sentence Records and one brand spankin' new song. All done again in a studio for this album. So for your hardcore kids who prefer the metal flavor, Eighteen Visions are considered a credible example of metallic aggression melded with a hardcore mentality. Though Eighteen Visions most definitely kick the metal end. And kick it hard. Till it whimpers and crawls home. Then they call it out and kick it some more. And make fun of its mother. So it learns a lesson. And there are lessons to be learned here. Pull out your notebook cause you are not that quick. The screaming is a limited appeal at times and is best when the particular lyric is being doubled with a clear verse or accented with that brutal clarity often giving a neurotic feel (very cool), but the crushing movement of the guitars and their constant bursts of speed against pure riff are what give the band its appeal. The re-recording of the older songs gives this particular release a certain cohesiveness (as 'best of' discs often are jerky in flow due to drastic recording differences and environments from track to track). This makes this less a 'best of' album and more of a 'The Best' album from Eighteen Visions.

The latest effort from Orange County's flashiest hardcore/metal band, Eighteen Visions is just short of amazing. This is a greatest hits of sorts spanning their early career and first three releases. It contains ten re-recorded tunes from their debut, "Lifeless," on Life Sentence Records, "Yesterday Is Time Killed" on Cedergate Records, and the "No Time For Love" 7" on Trustkill Records, as well as a brand new track called "Motionless and White," which follows the path taken on their last album, "Until The Ink Runs Out." It's a song that deals with the topic of drug abuse and vocalist James Hart incorporates his great array of piercing screams, death-like growls, and clean vocals as well. On the rest of the album, Hart adds in clean vocals to the older songs to diversify and give it that more recent Eighteen Visions flair, whereas the previous versions were mainly one-dimensional deep vocals. The lyrical imagery on these songs is much darker also, for it deals more with religion and death. Overall, this is just a great album. They picked great songs to re-record and there are no disappointments. My favorite tracks would have to be "The Psychotic Thought", "Russian Roulette..." and "Isola In The Rain." So be prepared to "SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!!!"

There's a reason that this band have been building up so much hype as of late. Cause they fucking shred you to itty bitty pieces in about four seconds flat. I actually think this fucking CD blew one of my speakers, it's so heavy and overdriven. With a primarily booming sound that features detuned guitars spewing out gritty riffs accented by the occasional squeal, these guys cut across the pack easily. And then they add in obtuse elements to the music that makes every aspect jump out even further. I think opener "Motionless and White" is the only time when a fadeout has truly worked with hardcore. If you listen hard enough, you can hear the "big boys" of extreme music pooping themselves silly.

Before Eighteen Vision released their stuff on Trustkill they had already released two CDs on smaller labels that quickly went out of press. Eighteen Visions didn’t re-release all these songs but re-recorded each song and the result of this is this compact disc of Eighteen Visions. Eighteen Visions had a real own sound and people who know the sounds of Eighteen Visions should know what to expect. Very unpredictable, chaotic and heavy riffs combined with a lot of screaming and clean parts and a lot of tempo changes. This is as brutal as hell…if you like it brutal, then you should check this one out.

The audacity required to entitle your second readily available full-length The Best Of is truly startling, but if the band has the intestinal fortitude and, more importantly, the music to pull it off, more power to them. Such is the case with Eighteen Visions, whose brashness, cockiness and self-proclaimed "rock'n'roll kids playing metal in a hardcore band" mandate has chaffed some in the metallic hardcore scene, causing the band to boldly state "you love to hate us" in the liner notes. Sure, they just may be the glam rock pariahs of hardcore metal, but they rock, plain and simple. The Best Of features one new song, "Motionless and White," and ten previous released out-of-print tracks, re-recorded and infused with Eighteen Visions' current sound and swagger. "Motionless and White" continues their utilisation of metallic hardcore staples while throwing in more groove and clean, melodic segments contrasted against breakdowns, grind/mid-tempo mosh and choruses. However, it is the re-recorded material that shines. "Russian Roulette With A Trigger Happy Manic Depressive," "Slipping Through The Hands of God" and "Dead Rose," amongst others, showcases Eighteen Visions with a groovier, thrash/death-inspired sound, liberally throwing around the down-tuned, plodding death riffs that nu metal appropriated and subsequently ruined, with catchy metallic hardcore tangents and the occasional "yeah!" While theoretically not conveying anything groundbreaking (oft times coming across like a bastard combination of noisecore and undiluted mosh metal), Eighteen Visions possesses an intangible charisma that stakes a claim to a unique identity, instilling their songs with a catchiness and marauding atmosphere that, above all else, rocks.

Eighteen Visions writes guitar licks to die for! Vocally they are as mean as kicking your mother in law in the pussy. These kind words are brought to you buy us assholes at MKF, and they are deserving! EV is brutal hardcore, and they are back bringing you new/old material. "The Best Of" is reworked tunes that were responsible for their marriage to Trustkill. They smashed shit up in the studio and came out with a record that is worthy of the title "The Best Of". Some of the tracks appeared on EV's Trustkill debut "Until The Ink Runs Out". But check out the old shit man...violent! "Motionless Is White" is riffage up your ass. Grunts and howls of angst melt your speakers and think guitars, and hard-hitting drum licks pave the way of destruction. Massive licks and harmonics destroy what you knew of hardcore before. A melodic part comes from nowhere and blind sides you. The pain James lets out is sad and screaming for understanding. Belching and heaving James leads you into the chaos with "An Old Wyoming Song". Unrelenting and repetitive the guitars bash their way into your psyche. At parts there is a low vocal parts, and other sections unleash a disturbing scream. More riffs, simply crushing! This is just touching on what the rest of the CD holds. Eighteen Visions goes a different route to progress. By revisiting their older work and improving upon it they have shown they are hear to stay as one of the most brutal hardcore bands on the planet.

Heavy music; hardcore, metalcore, whatever you want to call it, has been going through a re-evolution for the past few years. Bands like (older) Earth Crisis, and One King Down have been injecting new layers of speed metal, death metal, and even post-2000 metalcore into the genre pioneered by Minor Threat and Black Flag. Witness the latest evolution of hardcore; Eighteen Visions. Before I go any further, I should mention that part of my love of modern hardcore comes from the fact that bunch of hardcore kids who don't look all that different from me can kick the crap out of any modern metal band, musically (and probably literally too) And while modern metal has turned into a mish-mash of rap, metal and country, the only people carrying the flag of real metal and hardcore are the hardcore bands; and thankfully, out of the view of the mainstream, metalcore and hardcore have evolved into something more intense and powerful than anything played by long-haired ex-hippies who smoke too much pot, and feel that downtuning guitars and swinging their hair around while singing about trite nonsense like "Satan" makes them tough. While the band hasn't been around that long, they have continuously pushed the envelope between records; they've gotten heavier, and less punk-influenced, but still maintaining their hardcore edge; like Dillinger Escape Plan, they manage to cram so many influences into an ear-bleedingly powerful record. Can I say one thing? The production is un-fucking-believable. For a band that focuses on the low end, it's remarkable how much you can hear. in "Motionless and White" when the vocalist sings a little, over the churning palm-muted powerchords, you can hear every inflection in his voice, and none of the instruments are lost. Also, in the closer "Dead Rose" when one of the guitarists turns off the distortion to play a haunting melodic passage, you can hear each string ring. The lead vocalist, credited only as "James" spins vocal cartwheels, alternating between high-pitched screams, growls and eerie singing. The relentless assault of the band itself never stops and manages to create a wall of sound that is both dense, but nevertheless rhythmic. And what would a metal-influenced hardcore band be without spectacular breakdowns? Well, there is no shortage of those. Proving that they aren't married to steady tempoes, the music speeds up to breakneck speeds, and slows down to provide a rhythmic crunch. That's actually one of the cool points, because something that people seem to have forgotten now days, is that dynamics in music actually increases the intensity of the faster, heavier parts, and keeps the music interesting; screaming over fast guitars and drums isn't interesting in of itself, but dropping into a nice slow breakdown makes those fast bits all the more compelling. I definitely wouldn't recommend this for most people, mind you, even if you consider yourself a hardcore fan, the level of metal influence in this record does make it a little "out there" for the average earth-crisis-american-nightmare-one-king-down fan, but for those who don't mind a little hardcore with their metal, and can stand a band that doesn't seem to spend an awful lot of time preaching about sXe, would be loathe to pass this one up.

California metalcore heathens Eighteen Visions are back with a 'best of' record that does nothing but compliment their current sound as of late. The Best Of is comprised of re-recorded tracks from their CDs Lifeless and Yesterday Is Time Killed, their 7" No Time For Love and one newly recorded song. The Best Of is the follow-up record to their critically acclaimed album Until The Ink Runs Out, being their second album on Trustkill Records. So, why a 'best of' recording so early on in their musical career? With intensive line-up changes occurring since their first album Lifeless, released on Life Sentence Records, a re-recording of select songs from each of their older albums with their current (and steady) line-up was the most logical choice of recordings Eighteen Visions could have made. Not only has their sound changed a full 360 degrees since their first recording, but not one of their previous recordings accurately captured the chaos that Eighteen Visions emanates during their live sets. Each re-recorded song maintains the feel of the original while adding a more metalized twist to the overall feel. Some of the songs wind up being a bit slower than the original ("Russian Roulette..."), but where Eighteen Visions lose the initial speed of the song, they make up for it in adding more in-depth layering. Some of the highlights of this album are the little nuances that singer James Hart inserts, adding insanely low death growls and glass-shattering high pitched screams that weren't in the originals. But what if you're not familiar with Eighteen Visions at all? The Best Of would probably be your only accurate representation of what this band is currently capable of. Their third full length Until The Ink Runs Out showed amazing potential, but wound up falling short due to its somewhat muddy production. The Best Of does dwell in somewhat of a gritty production, but remains clear enough so that the music being presented is transferred properly. In a nutshell, Eighteen Visions have enough metal guitar riffing and insane blastbeats and double bass moments to please most metal metalheads, while maintaining a fair amount of hardcore elements to win over the hardcore crowds worldwide. The Best Of really is the best recording Eighteen Visions have going for them. No matter what music you may listen to, this record will appeal to fans of any metal-oriented genre.