AWmusic

The Town of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina is about an hour north east of Greensboro, and is best known as the real town which served as the inspiration for the fictional town of Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show. It is from this picturesque setting that Christian Hardcore act A Kiss For Jersey found their passion for music and honed their sound.

A Kiss For Jersey, combine charging riffs with an at odds combination of both soaring and screaming vocals to create a well polished sound, that recalls early Underoath, with better vocals, as lead singer Zach Dawson’s voice is more akin to the soaring wails of The Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zaval than the high pitched nasal shrills of Aaron Gillespie that dot Underoath’s earlier albums.

On Victims, AKFJ’s follow up to 2006’s Keep Your Head Above Water, which was re-issued in 2008, Dawson, along with guitarists Matt Bean, and Cory Wood, bassist Tyler Lucas and drummer Joey Allan, put their musicianship on display, as they continuously lull the listener into, for lack of a better crack at their religious side, a stat of grace, before hitting their bitch switch and pounding you into the ground with a curdling scream and wailing guitars.

As for their religious side, which they proudly wear on their shoulders the way most bands wear a tattered heart, AKFJ, make no bones about what they believe. The band themselves state that, “One of the main focuses for A Kiss For Jersey is to be able to share their faith in Jesus Christ and his love and forgiveness.”

Their faith is evident in their music as well. The sixth track on Victims, A Tree and It’s Fruit, is just a straight up scripture reading, with some atmospheric guitars and drums, provoking the image of a barren wasteland with but one tree stretching out of the ground towards a bloody sky.

Dawson and Co spare no chance to lay on the Christ in their lyrics. Oh, Infamous City, breaks down into a bombastic Psalm with a call and answer you won’t likely find in an actual church.

Taken away from all we are
Now the walls we shake my God
Faith work your way down every heart
The more we face my God

While Salus Suas Extanderealas Concedit, finds a man both pleading with and accepting God in the face of the death of a loved one, while The Flood, evokes Old Testament Style images of the total destruction.

There is no doubting their faith or their talent, as AKFJ have crafted a solid album, complete with time changes, awesome riffs, soaring vocals, wailing screams and modern genuflecting that will keep you on your knees, whether you’re an alter boy, or someone who wouldn’t be caught dead alone with a priest.

All Jesus aside, A Kiss For Jersey cram a truck load of musical talent into Victims, and it won’t be long till they get noticed and replace Opie and Aunt Bee as the most popular thing to come out of Pilot Mountain.

A Kiss For Jersey – Oh, Infamous City
A Kiss For Jersey – Salus Suas Extanderealas Concedit

Tags: A kiss For Jersey, Aaron Long, album, Christian, Hardcore, Jesus, Pilot Mountain, post-hardcore, The Mars Volta, Underoath