Even if the guys ( and girls ) at Distant Rise Records are so young they have already released some cool records of good pop-punk bands; probbaly this compilation “Collect All 4!” is their best release yet as it features four of the best pop punk local bands around today: three from The States - Agent Felix, Lucky7 and Whoopie Cuschion - plus one band from Australia, One Dollar Short. Every band plays five songs so in the end you will get 20 fresh and catchy songs all on one album.

Agent Felix starts up the record with “She’s Dreaming” and other catchy tracks as “Behind Me”, “Her So Called Friends” and “Baby Got Back” and I can bet anything that if these four dudes keep up with the hard work can get the new sensation, when kids will be getting tired of Blink182.

One Dollar Short comes next and these five dudes have songs that are powerful and yet melodic: “Perfect Day” and “Friend” are probably the best tunes they play, in a mix of Mxpx and Lagwagon…I know it’s hard to imagine.

After the Australian band, it’s time for Lucky7, probably the best band on the record, they have some really catchy choruses like a mix of Blink182 and Fenix*Tx, and if I have to look out for some future great acts , together with Agent Felix, I’d say Lucky7. Best songs : “For the Kids”, “Miss Fortune” and “Yellow Pages”, but also the other two songs are on the same level.

Last but not least band, Whoopie Cushion. I heard these guys are the band with the greatest number of appearences on compilation, as they are on about 100 and more comps, I dunno if this is true, but hell, they know how to play catchy stuff, although the recording is not done as well as other bands. “Through the Door” and the funny “I Wish My Girlfriend Looked Like Meg Ryan”, which sounds like a Blink182 song off “Chesire Cat”, I just don’t remember that name. Also, they play an acoustic song “Never Looking Back” , which is kind of sad.

In the end, if you are fond of pop punk , but are getting tired of Blink182, Mxpx and company, these four bands will surely be enough fun for your ears.

Wishing Well is a melodic punkrock band from Vernon, BC, in Canada; they started in 1996, and after ther first record “Choices Made, Lessons Learned ” and a lot of never ending touring, the band is releasing their second album, “Intervals”, on Vancouver-based Spawner Records.

“Intervals” features 10 songs that explorers different musical styles, from hardcore to skate-punk to emo and pop-punk, and the diversity of the songs make it quite unusual: there are fast punk songs as “Lit” or the opening “Nothing More Nothing Less”, but the band do not miss to play poppy songs as “Pieces”, or “Jimmy Doggit”, and include also some acoustic tunes as “Who You Aren’t” or “Sustain”. Plus, the lyrics are about themes like love, friendship and some “mellow” stuff, in the vein of some New Found Glory songs.

In general I’d say that fans of pop punk, with a touch of emo, ( I mentioned New Found glory, I would aslo say Saves The Day ) would find this album fresh, clever, powerful and never boring. I hope Wishing Well will not go into that group of bands that “are good but stay unknown” just because people are too lazy to check them out.

Layaway Plan is not your average punk or hardcore band: they are heavy! They mix punkrock fast rhythms with a lot of mettalic riffs and when I heard their new album “Solutions To Substance” ( after their record “Force Of Habit”) I just thought if I had already heard something similar but my answer was “no way”.

The band plays more or less with a skate punk attitude, everything on the record is fast: guitars, drums, bass riffs; only the vocals sometimes remind of slower harmonies, but in general the album can be descrbed with the word “speed”, and the song “Speed” itself is the proof: a 30 second song that is just a metallic guitar solo that sounds like it was stolen to such bands as Fear Factory or Iron Maiden. From the opening “Energy Surge”, to “Forgotten Names” and “Final Hour” the album goes on and on in a growing exploding on energy. Also, the fact that three out of fourteen songs ( “Follow”, “Speed” and “Look Ahead” are only instrumental shows these four guys are good musicians.

I give the advice to all the fans of power and speed driven music the advice to listen to Layway Plan ( also check their appearence on the “Across the Water” compilation ) , becasue there aren’t many bands around that play like them, that’s for sure.

Bottles & skulls hail from a northen Florida town and after after crossing the country with a self produced seven inch record, a couple of east coast tours, they settled into their new home of San Francisco. During their hard working tours, these four guys crashed onto stages with bands like Zen Guerilla, The Toilet Boys, Murder City Devils, Supersuckers, The Barfeeders and even NOFX, and now they are realeasing their first full length album: “Never Kiss the Wasp”.

It’s not easy to say how this band plays: they have a lot of influences, mostly I’d say rock n’ roll, punk’77, a lot of brutal and fast riffs and much more energy than you may expect. Probably the bands mentioned above, the ones with whom Bottles & Skulls toured - plus Rancid and a good dose of street punk style - describe some of the band’s influences.

“Never Kiss the Wasp” has ten tracks, of which, the last one is just a kind of phone call, so, not a real tune: the opening “The Mess” describes quite well the whole record, both musically and lyrically, it’s not a proper mess, but it’s not even so far away from that. Songs like “She Says Fuck Punk Rock”, “Nick Hole”, “Painkiller” and “Best Friends” are the most well done songs, with fast choruses and raw power.

If you are fans of some bands mentioned here ( even if you should forget NOFX style ), Bottles & Skulls may sound like the next big thing of the genre, but I doubt they will be appreaciated by the ones who don’t like punk rock n’ roll.

The Starting Line is the latest band ( once signed to We The Poeple Records ) that joined the Drive Thru Records roster - actually, The Movielife is the latest band, but “With Hopes Of starting Over” is the newest release from the label.

The EP conitains five songs, of which one is a cover song of Starship, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop us UNow”.If you heard the Starting Line’s songs that were on the Drive Thru sampler “Hello Wisonsin”, you have an idea of what the band sounds like: some poppy punk mixed with emo sound that reminds a lot of New Found Glory, and Blink182 type sound.

The five sons are not even enough to talk of anything in a decent way, probably this was released just to let the label fans start knowing this new band. Of course “Leaving” and “Greg’s Last Day” are two possible hits , becasue of their catchy chouruses, but in general I’d say The Starting Line is just like 1,000 other bands: songs about broken hearts, girls, love filled with some easy listening music.

Of course these four dudes had the luck to sign for Drive Thru Records, we just have to wait and see for their next full length album to say if they really deserve the attention they will surely get: in the meantime enjoy these five songs EP.

No Use For A Name is the first Fat band to release a live record for the “Live In A Dive” series, and I guess that many other live albums will come, probably from almost all the Fat bands ( can’t wait to hear the Strung Out and the Lagwgon albums, if they will ever come out). Talking of the first issue, No Use For A Name delivers a great live record, with 20 songs that covers more or less their whole music career.

The band recorded this album during two live shows, one in Los Angeles and the other in San Francisco, and the sound quality is just perfect, you may almost think there was some extra-work in the studio, but I doubt it, as it’s no news that No Use For A Name is just great playing live, I heard them once and I was stoked how these four guys can play, of course there are some moments where teh band is out of time or out of tune or has slurred speech, as the guys themselves admit, but the whole recording is just great.

About the songs, they put in this album a lot of tunes from “More Betterness”, as “Coming Too Close”, “Chasing Rainbows”, “Room19″, “6 Degrees From Misty”, a few songs from their best album ever “Making Friends”: “Invincible”, “On The Outside”, and the ghost track of that album, here called “Gene And Paul, I Hate You Most Of All, And Ace, You’re the Ace, And Peter, You’re the Cat”which by the way is the lyric of the song. Some other songs are taken from “Leche Con Carne”, as “Justified Black Eye”, “Exit”, “Soulmate”, “Straight From the Jacket” and the Bob Marley’s cover “Redemption Song”, plus a tune off “The Daily Grind”, “Feeding the Fire” and a couple of really old ones, before the band was on Fat, named “Hail To the King” and “Don’t Miss the Train”. No Use For A Name also played the 30 seconds song “Sara Fisher” ( with some different lyric) and the Misfits cover “I Turned Into A Martian”.

Of course a lot of fans may get pissed because the band did not put enough old material or your favourite songs ( I myself cannot understand how they couldn’t put my all time favourite “Sitting Duck” and “3 Month Weekend”) but there is no wonder, as the band has so many good songs and if they put them all in a live record they had to do a double CD and it was not even enough.

Also, the CD that comes out is enanched, this means that you can put it in your computer and see a 15 minutes video with 3 live songs ( the same of the live record, “Invincible”, “Straight From the Jacket” and “On the Outside” ) and an interview in which you can see what is the favourite hobby of singer/guitarist Tony Sly. Plus, the booklet is also a small version of the comic book with a funny story written by the guys of NUFAN. The LP instead, comes out with an actual big comic book but if you get the CD you can buy the comic book for 2 dollars without the LP.

Before putting this CD ( the second Tiger Army album, after the “S/t” debut) in the player I did not have any idea of what I was going to listen to: from the pasteboard covered booklet I read that artists that took part in the making of this CD were, among others, Davey Havok from AFI and Son Of Sam on vocals, Lars Frederiksen and Matt Freeman from Rancid on guitars and vocals, so, I did not know if I had to expect a kind of goth hardcore influenced album or street punk music. I then realized from such songs as “Towards Destiny” , “Incorporeal” and “Power Of Moonlite” that Tiger Army mix completely those two genres, with hardcore voices ala AFI but also some rock n’ roll/punk music in the vein of Rancid in pure HellCat style.

Talking of the band, it is formed by three members who have been in other bands too: drummer London Mayplayed played in both Samhain and Son of Sam, upright bassist Geoff Kresge played in the already mentioned AFI, while singer Nick13 was in a band called Influence 13 in which there were also other AFI members. It’s all about AFI almost!

I do not have any advice to give to anyone, I personally found this album a bit boring yet good, although it has some turn on songs like “Grey Dawn Breaking” or the jazz-rhythmic “Cupid’s Victim”, but in general I’d say that AFI fans should get this. Oh yeah, and Rancid fans too!

This album was originally released on Eulogy Recordings, but it sounded so good that the guys at Fearless decided to have it re-mixed and re-did all the stuff that is usually done after an album is recorded, and released it .

Now, this record has 9 songs, plus a “ghost-track” - which is an amazing cover of the Skid Row song “I Remember You” - and although it has less songs that the original verison of Eulogy, it is already worth the money and the time.

The main characteristic of Glasseater is that they are quite un-labelled, as they play both furious hardcore with a lot of screams and melodic punk that someone would also call “emo”. Truly it’s not that they play furious songs and melodic songs in a separated way: they mix it all in the same song. Such tunes as “7 Years Bad Luck”, “A New Day” or “5 In the Van” contain both the catchiness of soft music mixed up with the screams of the second voice and the powerful guitar riffs. Of course, there are also songs where the band gives more space to the melody, as on “Betting On A Loser” and “The Last Song I Write About You”, but in general they put all together in the same track.

I’d say Glasseater sounds like a mix of the hardest part of A New Found Glory and the softest part of Shai Hulud, and I hope this album will not be ignored by the masses: if Fearless Records decided to re-release this, it is only because Glasseater rock and I think we will still hear talking about them in the near future.

This live album has more than one CD in it, in fact it has two live CD’s , one from All and one from the Descendents. So, All or the Descendents? This is the problem. Actually it is not a real big problem, as the two bands sound the same, as they have three out for members that are exactly the same people, but I always thought Milo Aukerman’s voice was way better that the Chad Price’s one, although musically it is always well played pop punk at its best, and it is not a case that Stephen Egerton and Bill Stevenson produce and record tons of good albums in their Blasting Room studio in Colorado.

The live album from All features 22 live songs, it is not a real concert, even if it was recorded on Macrh 30 and 31, 2001 live in Colorado: they recorded some songs and slapped them together on one disc, as there are just a few moments in which you hear the band’s members talking during the songs. Anyway, it features songs from more or less any All album: some tunes, like “Fairweather Friend”, “She Broke My Dick”, “Teresa”, World’s On Heroin” from the Epitaph newest albums “Mass Nerder” and “Problematic”, some others as well from their older stuff, like “Skin Deep”, “Educated Idiot”, “Bubblegum”, “Hate To Love”, “Birds”, “Honey Peeps” and a bunch of other catchy powerful tunes too.

Talking of the Descendents album, it has 21 kicking ass songs and probably the best stuff the Descendents ever played, and Milo is just great live ( as on the song “All-O-Gistics”). It was recorded in 1996 from October 10 to 14, in Los Angeles, and it has some great tunes as the newest “Everything Sux”, “I’m The One”, “This Place”, “Coffe Mug”, “We”, “Thank You”, as well as older songs as “Original Me” ( which is an All cover ), “I Like Food”, “Weinerschnitzel”, “My Dad Sucks”, as well as songs from masterpiece albums as “Silly Girl” from “I Don’t Want to Grow Up”, “Myage”, “M-16″ from “Milo Goes To College”. The album really made me understand how the Descendents ( and All as well ) is a great live band that does not need any re-mixing or that studio stuff for a live album: they played, recorded it all, and put the best songs on the CD. Great!

Both albums come out together in the same package ( and you pay them as one signle full length album!), I think to give to the fans some “new” stuff to listen to, and althou0gh I believe any Descendents/All fan will definitely buy this, I can only say to every lover of punk rock and pop punk to pick this up, especially if you do not have any albums of these bands ( and if you do not have any albums of these band it is not good), because the Descendents is not a pop punk band, they are the pop punk.

If Epitaph - Hellcat to be more precise - has got its own Dropkick Murphy’s, Fat Wreck Chords - Honest Don’s to be more precise - cannot not have its own kilt wearing punks, The Real McKenzies. Even if when you look at this band you may think they are Scottish, they are from Vancouver, BC, in Canada.

Now, I could talk about this band talking of the Dropkick Murphy’s and a no one would notice the difference, not even me. Honestly, I am not a big fan of this kind of music and attitude: street punk mixed with traditional scottish folk, also because I find this pretty boring, and when I heard the McKenzies’ songs on the Fat Club 7inch, I did not dig them a lot. But this record is kind of funny.

“Loch’d & Loaded” consists of 16 songs for less than half an hour, the songs are fast, catchy and someway enjoyable, although I’d never listen to this record more than once a week. From the opening “Nessie” - about the famous monster of Lockness - to “Gi’ Us A Dram”, to “Pickled” where there are more punk 77 inluences just as on “Whiskey Scotch Whiskey”( although whiskey is not my favourite drink this song is damned catchy), to the marching rhythm of “Scot ‘Round the World”, in this album there is more or less anything a Dropkick Murphy’s fan could hope to listen: angry guitar riffs, bagpipes ( a lot of them ), a mandolin, penny whistles and so on.

Also if you dig Scottish folk a lot, apart the own Real McKenzies songs, there are some traditional scottish songs like “Flower Of Scotladn”, “Bonnie Mary” and “Memories Of Old Pa Fogerty”m which is a 42 seconds song of bagpipes only.

I recommend this album to any fans of The Dropckick, and to the ones who would like to g oon holiday in foggy Scotland, but if you are not into this music a lot, these kilt wearing punks could not be what you can appreciate at its best.