I don’t know what to think about this band. As a reviewer I try really hard to put all the bullshit aside and listen to a CD for what it is. I do. However this band is talented in playing their instruments, but why would you want to be in a band that sounds like everyone else. I listen to the whole thing and the only thing that popped into my head was… polished turd. Come on… they sound like every Fat band and every other Blink 182 wanna be. Come on guys! Get your slick shoes on and run away from that style of music. You guys have talent, fuckin’ mix it up and try to sound just little bit different from all the other new school punk bands. Hell, throw some Emo shit in there for shits and giggles. This is not a bad review, I’m just sick and tired of listening to the same band.

There’s a very blurry line between Dead Sexy’s sound. From the hard rock n’ roll style of Guns n’ Roses to the straight-up punk anthems of The Ramones. If this band was on MTV, kids would eat the shit out of it. For real! The only problem with this CD, is that it only has 9 songs. I want more, damn it. What do you call this? An album, I think you need at least 10 songs for that. An EP?  Nope, no more than six. So what is it? The world may never know. I guess there’s some kind of enhanced CD thing that works on your computer. I don’t know. I hate computers, but I don’t hate this CD. In fact, if Dead Sexy goes on tour, I want to be a groupie. I know it’s not very punk, but there’s this magic to their songs that brings back that 70’s vibe. I think they cover the whole 70’s decade very well. The best and the worst.

The Selby Tiger’s are so punker than you it’s not even funny. This band will kick your new school punk-ass teeth in and fucking shove a Black Flag down your throat. 13 straight blasts of energy in 34 minutes. It really should be illegal to make catchy music like this. If you call yourself a true punk (self promotion rules!!!) then you should unplug your computer and throw it out the window*. Then run down to the record store and buy this CD. Then come home and listen to a great album. Afterwards, you can go outside and breakdown in tears for destroying your computer. * - We here at Truepunk.com are not responsible for what you do to your computer.

It’s been awhile since I heard a really good compilation where all the bands fit perfect and compliment each other perfectly. Well I’m still searching, however there are some bands on this CD that are worth a listen, but for the most part all the bands sound the same on here. What do you expect for a Blink 182 clothing line compilation. I’ll take every cheap shot I can get, but there the one’s laughing with their million dollar bank accounts. You got to give them props for working hard at least. Think about it… a multi-million dollar band, clothing lines, drum teacher, side-project band and who knows what else. I thought I heard one of them was a porn star too, but that might just be an internet rumor. Any who, you can’t call them lazy, but you can call them a monotonous music machine. Anyway, this comp has a lot of unreleased, polished turds from some half decent bands like… Alkaline Trio, Box Car Racer (blink 182 side project thing), Autopilot Off, Rival Schools, Glassjaw, Blink 182 and Jimmy Eat World. Cheap bands for a cheap price sounds like a match made in Hell. So pick it up for the really neat unreleased songs that you won’t find anywhere else. Well there might be a reason why they are unreleased, but that’s a whole other review. Hey, don’t listen to me, I’m just jealous and jaded. So go ahead and feed the machine. You’re the one that has to sleep at night, not me.

Just that good ole’ pop-punk, rock n’ roll music. I love these guys for the fact that their songs are all over the place. More bands that get over exposed then these guys should stop playing for a second and listen to this cd. They might actually learn a thing or two about what’s important about being in a band. Think about it, your in a band that’s your own. It’s your music, don’t pigeon hole yourself. It takes a lot of balls to put yourself out on the shelf for the public to buy you and listen to you. It’s a make or break situation. If you make a bad first album, people will remember that forever and hold it against you. [Don’t you hate it when the reviewer rants during a music review!] Drain Babies might not have the best name in the business, but they got soul to their music. Some of my favs are ‘Out of my Head’ and ‘Lost and Forgotten’. There are 16 songs on ‘The Blind Charge’ that seems to go on forever after a while. My advice would have been to cut this album down to 12 gems and throw an extra song at the end as a hidden track. You can always use the leftover songs for compilations or unreleased mp3s on your website. But some bands feel that because their paying all this cash to get the CD produced that they should stuff it to the gills and get their moneys worth. But have no fear if you give this album a chance, I’m sure you’ll get your money’s worth. www.drainbabies.com

Dude, I remember reviewing this band’s first cd. Boy, did they suck hard, but at least on this album they can actually play their instruments. That’s the only good comment you’re gonna get from this reviewer’s mouth. This band just doesn’t know how to write songs. They’re not punk rockers, but they want to be. They sound like a bad garage band… HA! That’s what they should have called their band… My So-Called Bad Garage Band. Don’t give me the evil eye. I love garage music, but some bands should just stay in there and sniff gasoline all day instead of playing music. Call me an asshole, I’ve gotten used to it. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. This band should just keep their day job and call it quits. I’m serious.

Less than a year after “Six Years in the Desert”, Nevada’s pride Fall Silent are coming back with a new record, that features twelve great tracks of hardcore mixed with punk-rock mixed with death metal mixed with grind-core music, and I guess that nobody in this genre will be able to even compare “Drunken Violence”. With the addiction of two new members, Donny Johnson on guitar and Justin Spalin on bass, Fall Silent have new energy not only to put out much faster and furious hardcore music, but also to start touring with no stops all over the U.S., Europe, and even Japan.

“Drunken Violence” is a weird album: you could expect it to be one thing, like fast and angry, and the first time you listen to it, you really hear it as fast and angry, but the second, third, fourth times you will also hear new elements, some more attention for all those little particular things that “hardcore” bands do not see, like the guitar solos, riffs and drum beats. You could think they just enetering in the studio saying “come ‘on, let’s make some fucking noise”, instead, on this record, everything - or anyway, most of all - is decided and well thought before it’s done: nothing is left to the case. And I think this is the great thing about Fall Silent and “Drunken Violence”. Just listen to some songs as the amazing “Flowers For Whores”, or even “The First Seven Inch Club” or again “Never Before…Never Again…Again” and you’ll understand what I’m saying. But I guess that even only the intro “Violence” and the outro “From Violence to Uninhibited Self Control” , which are both musical only, it is easy to see how these five guys have the knowledge and will to play hardcore music as it is meant to be played. Loud, fast, pissed and with a lot of sarcasm. Not to mention the vocals, they scream about America’s diseases, war, and also skateboarding.

I think that Fall Silent is the fresh band that any fan of hardcore was waiting for, a band that has no prejudice, no border, no limit and no limitations, but a great attitude and will to spread the word of music and accuse towards society with the help of music itself. If you look also at the artowork, you will see some provocation through the designs in the booklet, and this can only give me more respect for this band.|carlo@staff.truepunk.com

With such a provocative title there is no doubt that labelling the new record from Curl Up And Die as “innovative” is surely reductive. After a seven inch and an EP called “The Only Good Bug Is A Dead Bug”, after being nominated “Stand Out Band for 2001″ by Revolver Magazine, after playing with such bands as Poison the Well and 18 Visions, these four dudes flyed to Boston to record their new album with Kurt Ballou from Converge and what came out was “Unfortunately We’re Not Robots”, a masterpiece of metal core influenced music, even tough they mention as influences such bands as Neurosis, Saves the Day and Black Flag among others.

The album is opened by for songs “We”, “Are”, “All”, “Dead”, of 3 seconds each, and I guess this is a great idea to open an album: making you think “hey each of these four songs mean nothing without the others”. Coming up there are tunes as the full of anger “Ted Nugent Goes AOL”, the slow song of ten minutes “You’d Be Cuter If I Shot You in the Face”, that shows all of the influences of the band, fro metal to even some slow and soft chords, or even “Doctor Doom, A Man Of Science, Doesn’t Believe in Jesus, so why the Fuck do You”, which is some kind of representation of the whole record, with great drums, guitar riffs and raw angry vocals. Of course I think the song titles are some of the best ever ( together with the song titles of bands like DrowningMan, Dillinger Four and Propagandhi), just see “Kissing You Is Like Licking An Ashtray” or “Rich Hall ( Runner Up In A Carson Daly Lookalike Contest)” but find them out for yourself. Talking of the artwork of the album, it is quite hi-tech, and if you think you will be able to read the lyric sheet, well, forget it, it is nearly impossible, but I do not think the band wanted us to read the lyrics, only to see how cool it is the way they wrote the lyric sheet, with some weird effects that seem come out from a dumb program as Autocad.

Curl Up And Die made a kind of masterpiece with “Unfortunately We’re Not Robots”, I already said it, but I think this album has not a lot to do with music in a strict sense. I mean, you could hear this music on a Playstation game, and after playing for two hours, your parents should call an ambulance and take you to the near hospital, but this record is “politics”: the lyrics, all of them against the global intervention and fascism, the society of the money, the lack of freedom in this world; Curl Up And Die are great because they have a lot to say about what’s wrong in this world and they say it without caring of the reaction of the people, and I think this is just great!|carlo@staff.truepunk.com

This band features the bass player from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Joe Gittleman. So after I read their press kit, I didn’t rush to the stereo to play this cd right away. What a big mistake that was. I mean, I don’t despise the Bosstones, but their songs always sound the same. Anyways, this album rips through eleven songs like a punk band should. Once again the press kit compares them to the Pixies and Jawbreaker, but I don’t hear it. I do, however hear a strong Social Distortion sound to their music. Which makes this reviewer a very happy camper. One of my favorite songs on this album is ‘Lean on Sheena’ which features an electronic drum beat in part of the song. Another song that sticks out is the acoustic-punk tune ‘Take a Good Look’. Plus there’s a great punk anthem on here called ‘Bomb - Building Songs’. It’s real refreshing to hear music that makes you want to listen to it over and over again. That seems to be a rare thing in the punk scene these days. Hey Joe… wake up and smell the coffee and ditch that other band! Make this one a full-time commitment. So run out to your local record store and buy this cd. Don’t be a dildo and download off the net, because you won’t get the awesome cover art and song lyrics inside.

Sideone Dummy Records - 6201 Sunset Blvd. - Suite 211 - Hollywood, CA 90028

With this new band, Jade Tree Records is going to have one of the best roster of bands that a label ( and fans ) could want: think of Strike Anywhere, Girls Against Boys, New End Original, and other less famous like Milemaker, Pedro the Lion, The Explosion, and Mighty Flashlight on the same label. And Trial By Fire is nothing less, the label debut from this four guys was recorded by nobody but Brian Mcternan at the great Salad Days Studios, and the record shows not just all the good qualities of the band, but also the ability of Mcternan, who is producing like mad: Thrice, Movielife, New End Original to name a few.

Trial By Fire sounds quite similar to label mates Strike Anywhere, especially from the point of view of the lyrics and the social and political involvement, with a lot of tunes that tell a very specific analisis on the society of nowadays, just listen to “Threat to the Slave Trade”. Instead, from the point of view of the music, they are a bit different from Strike Anywhere: they play hardcore, alright, but their sound is much more tighter and somewhat less melodic that the one of the band from Richmond, maybe it is just my impression or the fact that the vocals are someway raw and also angry, but the when I say that these two bands does not play the exact music, well, all I say it’s a fact. To mention some songs, I’d say that the best things can be heard on tracks like “Point an Inward Finger”, “Test Pattern” and “To Whom It May Redeem”, with some quite fast guitar riffs, precise drum fills and everything a fan of hardcore punk music could want.

Of course, some say that Strike Anywhere and Trial By Fire play the same music and the same record, and some also say that Trial By Fire are just a copy; but consider that: a) if Trial By Fire’s album came out last year and Strike Anywhere came out this year, we’d be here talking of how Strike Anywhere was a copy of TBF, and b) it is no use accusing a hardcore punk band of playing like another band: it is all a matter of attitude and influences, and overall I think that “Ringing in the Dawn” is going to be one of the best hardcore album of 2002. |carlo@staff.truepunk.com