After “The Flush Sampler” and a tons of really cool and long compilations ( I cannot not remember the great “Serial Killer clothing compilation” and the “Punk Goes Metal” one), Fearless Records is releasing a new compilation featuring all of their 8 best and newest bands: pop punkers Dynamite Boy, newly signed soon to be kings of hardcore Glasseater, emo kids Junction 18, now famous At The Drive-In, the soon to be religion band called Bigwig, the Santa Cruz hardcorers Lonely Kings, the crazy ska punkers The Aquabats, and guttermouthish sounding 30FootFall.

Although some of these 8 bands are probably unknown to the masses, I swear these dudes are going to become the next generation of punk bands, and Fearless was so clever and cool to get them all signed and so put them all together on this compilation with all new songs plus some rare and previously unreleased tracks ( every band has some songs from album plus at least one unreleased track).

All the 24 songs are so cool and it would be hard and long to describe them all: so, songs that deserve a note are the unreleased tracks from Dynamite Boy ( “Sky’s The Limit”), the two new track from the upcoming Bigwig album, “Sore Loser” and “Counting Down”, the new tracks from upcoming albums of 30FootFall ( “Which Wat To Go Kabom” and “Two Wheels, One Dark Lord” and the Lonely Kings ( these guys are in the studio with Russ of Good Riddance and from the song “Did I Say I’m Sorry” I am pretty sure it is gonna kick some major ass). Plus, there are songs from Glasseater and Junction 18, two of the youngest and best bands around: both bands have two songs from their latest album and one unreleased track, so if you are fans of any bands mentioned, get this CD cuz it is worth the money.

If you happen to hear the name Fearless for the first time and not to know any of the bands mentioned ( and you may wonder what the hell were At The Drive-In doing on this cool label?), well, I give you the advie to pick this up: it has a lot of songs, a lot of bands and it is cheap.

Although when someone pronounces the words “punk” and “UK”, everybody thinks of The Sex Pistols, The Damned was the first British punk band to release an album ( “Damned, Damned, Damned”) and the first to cross the Atlantic and tour the United States, and their longevity as a band can be seen in a 25 years career, over 20 different band members and the ifluence they had on a lot of bands around in the 90’s, from the punkers Green Day and The Offspring, to other bands as Nirvana.

The band now has a solid line up that features original members Dave Vanian on vocals and Captain Sensible on guitars, plus new members as Patricia Morrison on bass, Pinch on drums and Monty Oxy Moron on keyboards.

With suchreferences, there is no wonder why Dexter Holland from The Offspring decided to sign The Damned on his own record label, Nitro Records, and let the record be produced by Grammy Award winner David Bianco, who already worked with such artists as Tom Petty, Teenage Fan Club, Rollins Band and Afghan Whigs.

“Grave DIsorder” features 13 tunes in the classic Damned style: a lot of catchy melodies, pop, old style punk rock and even some “surf” influences, like the Beach Boys. Such songs as “Song.Com” ( with some very nice backup vocals ), “Obscene”, “Democracy?”, “W” and “She” will soon become classic
in punk rock music.

If after listening to this record you enjoy it, I give the advice to listen also to The Damned classics “Machine Gun Etiquette”, “The Black Album” and even “Strawberries”. Stay Damned!

Sometimes you feel the need to ask what the hell is happening in the punk and hardcore scene, as there are so many bands that gain so much success without doing anything: maybe they are on a major label, maybe they do one good hit single that get played too many times on the radio and on tevelsion. And at the same time, there are some bands that work so much without getting a lot out of their life on tour, putting out albums on small independent record labels and still they do not seem to be as lucky as the bands mentioned above.

Well, I always put Kill Your Idols in the second category of hardcore bands: they work their asses off ot get some more exposure, and in fact they toured the U.S. about 26 times, and also toured all over Europe, Japan and even Korea, and have already released some good records, as the critically acclaimed “No Gimmicks Needed” and “This is Just the Beginning”, both on Blackout Records, and a lot of seven inches and various split records, also with such bands as The Nerve Agents.

Finally, with a new label and a new record, Kill Your Idols are ready to get the exposure they deserve in the world wide comunity of punk and hardcore music. “Funeral For A Feeling” is 17 tracks album that is about 34 minutes long, which means that the songs are fast, furious and with a kicking drumming that seems not to stop even between a song and another. These five guys prove that together with such bands as H2O, Good Riddance, 7 Seconds and a few others, they are the hardcore! And if this was not enough, such songs as “Dead By Dawn”, “All That And Vans Too!”, the Poison Idea cover “Made To Be Broken” show the skills of Kill Your Idols.

If you are into hardcore you do not need me to listen to “Funeral For A Feeling”, but if you can hardly listen to hard music with fast choruses and powerful guitar riffs, this album may cause a damage to your brain. ( Carlo )

The BMX Riders, soccer-players and pop-punk musicians are back after their “Hopeless Romantic” tragedy. Not tragedy in a bad or negative sense, but that record impressed only the biggest fans of the band, because it was a bit slow, althought there is no doubt it had some great songs ( “Kid” had some good sing-along chorus).

“How I Spent My Summer Vacation” probably means that the Souls spent their last summer writing the song for the new record and I guess they had a great time, as the 13 songs on this album are simply enjoyable pop-punk: short, fun, with some choruses in the classic Bouncing Souls fashion.

“That Song” opens the album, and from the lyric there is no doubt that the music theme will come back in some other songs, as “Broken Record”, “Private Radio”, “Break-Up Song”. Althought they sing a lot about music ( did they listen to a lot of record on their summer vacation?), the record has also some more “serious” issues, as in “Gone” or “Lifetime”, that deal with love stories. Anyway there is no time to feel sad, as “Manthem” - the best song in my opinion -and “Better Life” are what it takes to make a person feel better: “Manthem” in particular has some great “Oi Oi Oi” sing alongs in the middle of the song and it has some positive lyric, where I could heard also The Pete and Brian singing, apart the usual voice of Greg.

I bet that if the Bouncing Souls were asked if they could do such a good and fresh album, they would have answered “I dunno”…instead “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” is here and it is here to stay in my record player for a long time! (Carlo)

59 Times The Pain is a weird band: once they played fast things as on their previous job “End Of the Millenium” or also on “Twenty Percent Of My Hand”, with a lot of influence not only from the punk’77 music but also from the New York Hardcore, the Sick Of It All style to say it shortly.

Now, with this new album, the band seems to have taken a new direction, mostly influenced by rock n’ roll and street-punk, a bit like The Swingin’ Utters. It is true that in Sweden and in the North of Europe there are a lot of punk-rock n’ roll bands, like The Hellacopters and Puffball, and maybe 59 Times The Pain are mostly influenced by that music rather than the old N.Y. hardcore, and it is true the change is not radical, as on their previous work you could hear their rock roots, but I personally preferred the old 69 Times The Pain.

Even before opening the CD, just looking at the cover, at the style of singer/guitarist Magnus, wearing an old-style white shirt, a black jacket and hat, and then, once put the record in the radio, with such songs as “Welcome to the 21st Century” or also “Rock the City” there is no doubt about what “Calling the Publis” is gonna be: a rock n roll record.

The lyrics, at least these, follow the 59 Times The Pain tradition, as they are mostly about social issues; maybe they do not deal directly with politics, but they are not far away from that.

Fans of the band will have no problem with this record, but I cannot not wonder how Burning Heart Records is producing moslty rock acts: Randy sound rock-n-roll on their latest album, then there are Voice Of A Generation, Bombshell Rocks, Puffball, Business and 59 Times The Pain too; it’s not that I do not appreciate these bands, but I miss the good times of Millecolin, Satanic Surfers and now sadly defunct No Fun At All. (Carlo)

Everyone says this is a good EP becasue Mxpx are getting back to their roots,when they did such albums as “Pockinatcha” with 20 short fast songs . Actually I never I like “Life In General” a lot and I do not like very much their earlier stuff, so, this EP did not impress me a lot. In fact this record has 9 song, it is about 18 minutes long and if you liked the songs that Mxpx played when they were still at the beginning, you will like this too. Such catchy tunes as “Party II”and “Lonesome Town” are very poppy, in the vein of the Ramones, and in the song “The Opposite” you can hear an organ that makes the song the most catchy of the whole CD probably. Some other songs like “Talk Of the Town” or “Time Will Tell” are short and with screams, and this is the reason why I do not like them a lot: the voice of Mike is good for soft songs, not for pseudo-angry tunes…Talking of the production, it was totally recorded and produced by Mxpx in their hometown Bremerton, and it shows, as the sound is not as clear as on some other records. Also the artwork was completely done D.I.Y., and it is pretty simple in fact: a black skull on a red cover! In the end, if you like first Mxpx, you will probably appreciate this, but if you do like such albums as “Slowly going the way of the buffalo” or “The Ever Pasing Moment” ( that are a bit slower), you may say:”ok, this record is good but not their best one”.

After their split album with The Ataris, after the compilation “Short Music For Short People”, after endless work, Useless I.D. saw their punk career easily opened to success: a lot of touring with famous bands, a lot of exposure to people who wanted to hear more from them and a record label owned by The Vandals’ Joe Escalante that asked them to get signed. What could a punk band want more? And now, here it is, the first full length album on Kung Fu Records, “Bad Story, Happy Ending”.

If you know the band from their early beginning, you might not find a lot of new things on this record. Of course the sound and the production is someway better that on their previous records, but the melody and the songs did not change: always great catchy pop-punk.

Althought the album has 15 songs, it is only 33 minutes long, as it has very short fast songs, as “At the Stadium” or “Day By Day”, that are fast but with a lot of melody that is present on all the songs: the album is very easy-listening, and some songs would gain a lot of success from the mainstream public, as happened to Blink182. Such songs as “Note”, “No Time For Me To Be A Teenager” or “Nothing Logical In This Lifetime” are so catchy and “sunny” that will make you move your foot keeping the rhythm of the poppy guitar riffs. On the last song of the record, “A Year To Forget”, you can also hear a part sung by Kris Roe of The Ataris, and I believe that in general, as he produced this record, he helped Useless I.D. giving them a sound a bit similar to The Ataris’ one, and with this I do not mean this album may be an Ataris album: it’s just that when you ask to Kris Roed to produce and album you will probably will not hear hardcore or heavy metal, but pop punk.

This album also shows that you do not need to be Amercan or to be friend of a record label to get heard, every band can get popular and sign for a really cool label as Kung Fu Records, all you need to do is to work your ass off. Hands down to Useless I.D.! (Carlo)

California based punk band F-Minus have been busy the past years touring Europe and the U.s. with such bands as H2O and AFI, but they found the time to record their second album on Hellcat Records, “Suburban Blight”, which means the ruin or decay of suburbia, and, as the first track explains, “they take the money, you take the lies”, that leaves not a lot of doubts about the fact that F-Minus is a very political band, with angry music and angry lyrics too.

The album is a powerful collection of 20 tracks, for a total length of 20 minutes and 6 seconds, so, it’s not hard to understand how the songs are: fast guitar riffs, fast drummings and a lot of screams, with lyrics that can be both very short ( just a couple of phrases) but also a bit longer, as the one of “Cosmetic”. The music could be probably labelled as “hardcore”, but there are also some influences of old school punk, in a mix of music that if I describe its as “furious”, that wouldn’t be enough. Songs like “Capital Murder”, “White Collar Crime”, “Pain Messiah” , “Food Not God” and make it easier to realize that the other face of punk is not a smiling one. If on television we are shown happy pop punk bands that sing about teenagers, the underground movement of bands is much bigger and these have a lot of anger inside their minds, and groups like F-Minus are here to remind us this.

Also, the artwork of the CD explains pretty well what F-Minus is about: a black cover with a lot of provoking pictures, like a Molotov Coctail or a Homemade Granade…so, having fun but also making people think is the aim of F-Minus on this record, but also in general I’d say.

One last thing, the band is made up of 2 guys and 2 girls and the songs are sung both by a male vocal and also a female vocals, and from all the four members of F-minus, and this is a very good thing, because although the music may sound boring to a new-listener, the alternation of voices help understanding what we are hearing and I must say the voice Erica angry and cool.

All Wound Up is one of the biggest surprise in music of the year 2001. The band is a four pieces and it is made of Troy on vocals and guitar, Jeremy on guitar and backup vocals, Sean on bass and backup vocals and Joseph on drums ( and tattoos); they come from Western Washington and after playing around 150 and more shows with such bands as MxPx, Formula One, Slick Shoes, Dog Wood, they signed to record label Tooth And Nail, althought their songs have not a lot to do with religious beliefs, but they deal more with problems, relathionships and how the guys in the band have dealt with them.

“Hero” is All Wound Up’s debut album and in this CD you can hear different kinds of music that influenced the band: of course Bad Religion and the whole hardcore music, but aslo Metallica, Aliche In Chains, Poison and The Police. The 12 songs of the record are some of the freshest-sounding melodic punk-based rock songs that I heard this year and such tunes as the title track “Hero”, “100% Of Nothing”, “Bittersweet” and “Now Or Never” show this: they have powerful guitar riffs, catchy choruses and a lot of melodies that any pop punk fan can appreciate.

In general the CD has everything a fan could want: some cool guys and also some cool tracks, maybe with not a lot of fantasy, but so catchy and easy listening that I wouldn’t wonder if these 4 dudes will become the next trendy pop-punk band, althought I do not think a lot of people out there will ever notice this album … anyway according to the words of Troy, when he was asked where they see themselves in a year, he said “Cover of Rolling Stone, Counting Down the Top on TRL with Carson Daily”…we’ll see.

After the “death” of the trend of the so-called third wave of ska ( and with “ska” I mean ska-core, ska-punk, reggae-ska, etc…) , only the bands that played it for true passion are still on the music wagon, while all the others just quit or ended up playing different genres: someone started playing pop, some others started playing the same music but without the horn section. Instead, Rx Bandits are showing that they used to play and still play music for pure passion, and in fact they are still alive and releasing albums.

“Progress” is the third Rx Bandits work on Drive Thru Records, after their debut “Those Damn Bandits” and the album that led them to success, “Halfway Between Here And There”- that had some really hot tunes as “What If” and “Wrong With Me”- this band shows that they are one of the hardest working dudes around today: since 1998 they have already released three full-length albums and also took part on thousands of compilations with their songs, not to mention their endless tours with A New Found Glory, The Bloodhound Gang, Home Grown, Fenix TX, and a lot more.

The title of the album was not given without a good reason: this record means a progress both for the band itself, the music and the lyrics. Musically there are a lot of different elements and influences, like ska, punk, hardcore, reggae and electronic music that plays some strange effects that the average Rx Bandits listeners may not expect; lyrically the band seems to be more interested in social issues or personal expiriences rather than singing of high school dramas or broken hearts. In “Analog Boy” they sing about people who try to escape problems with drugs and pills and watching TV rather than facing them ; the song has also a slow beginning and it ends with one minute of pure electric sound, that made me think how much this guys are “open minded”, musically talking. Another song is “In All Rwanda’s Glory”, that is about the problem of racism and of how everybody is the same and it doesn’t matter the colour of the skin, and the band express this with the most anti-racist music: reggae. It is in fact a slow reggae song, like Bob Marley taught.

Talking of the songs, there is space for everything: apart the two named above, there are slow songs as “Babylon” and “Nugget”, while fans of fast ska-core and catchy choruses can stay cool, because such tunes as “Get” and “All the Time” have some of the best melodies I heard so far in a band that plays this stuff.

I cannot say abything bad about this record, it is just amazing, well, Rx Bandits are amazing, and I believe “Progress” deserve to get a lot of attention, also from the people that usually do not listen to this kind of music, because it is such a good work that contains 15 beautiful songs that are above the common “ska” label. I recommend this to everyone, it is a great album.