After bringing to life, or anyway to big public exposure, such bands as Ataris, Mi6, Antifreeze, Ozma and Useless I.D. to name a few, Kung Fu Records brings us the new pop punk band revelation from California, named Audio Karate. Personally I do not like karate at all, but, I guess for the sympathy of these four guys, or for their kung-fu attitude, I found their debut album “Space Camp” quite interesting.

Let’s say it clear now: there are thousands bands who play this genre and most of all are pathetic, everyone pose such big acts as The Ataris, Blink182, Green Day, and that stuff, but with Audio Karate this is a bit different. I mean, of course they have these songs about girls, and even tough the guitar player has enough guts to hang around with a Backstreet Boys t-shirt, I’d call this band one of the few breakout of 2002. “Space Camp” has only 12 songs - even if it is something like 40 minutes long - but they are quite interesting and all in all original and different from the majority of the pop punk around today. “Rosemead”, “Drama Club Romance”, “Hello St. Louise” are surely the three best songs off the album, inlfuenced by the sound of Ataris and the attitude of the Get Up Kids, at least in some lyrics and in some guitar arrangments.

The album then was produced by Trever Keith of Face To Face, so this should sound like a guarantee, and it is, as the sound seems very polished and the production very well-done compared to some other stuff I heard lately. If you want to check out some new pop punk talents, I think that right now I’d name Audio Karate as first.|carlo@staff.truepunk.com