www.vagrant.com

http://www.myspace.com/thebled

This is the third release by the Bled.  The Tucson, AZ band recorded “Silent Treatment” in Baltimore, MA  with the help of Brian McTernan.

Silent Treatment is a aggressive, and sometimes intense album that supersedes the pervious releases by The Bled.  The songs titles flocculate between heavy and aggressive songs to a few more melodic heartfelt songs. The heavy songs are the ones that really caught my ear like “Platonic Sleepover Massacre” which was one of my favorites on the album.

The band has a really interesting sound, with many hardcore underling sounds and I would guess influences.  I don’t know if I would call The Bled hardcore though, or if the band would want to even be classified in the hardcore category. Like I said they have some of the hardcore sounds and a few of the songs are just downright aggressive, but the album comes off as more artistic and aggressive instead of just aggressive as most hardcore falls into.

All in all this album is a great 3^rd release by The Bled.  Go check out their myspace and check out a few of their songs and if you dig them like I do you can order off their myspace as well.

Track Listing

1 Shadetree Mechanics
2 You Should Be Ashamed Of Myself
3 Three’s Away
4 Asleep On The Frontlines
5 Platonic Sleepover Massacre
6 Starving Artiste
7 Silver Lining
8 Some Just Vanish
9 Breathing Room Barricades
10 Beheaded My Way
11 My Bitter Half

 
www.myspace.com/dlitb
 
This is the type of punk rock I love. Insane, out of control punk rock with snappy funny lyrics. Don’t look in the basement.  These guy s are really fast paced with a few anthem style songs but always a bit cooky, always fast and a bit of horror theme thrown in for good measure.

You can really tell these guys have a bit of vandals and Guttermouth influence (in the insert you can see flyers on their walls for both) which is always good in my book. Guttermouth has always been one of my guilty pleasures I try not to mention to most people.  Their not exact duplicates of either bands and do not ripoff “the sound” of either bands; but if you do like either of these bands you will really dig Don’t look in the basement. This CD is well worth the $6 bucks they have it listed on their myspace  so go get it. And if your in the New York area go check them out as their local to that area.

Change! is a CD/DVD compilation of 21 tracks and 17 videos of various artists ranging from metal to emo.

Some of the artists on the comp are: As I Lay Dying, Aiden, Silverstein, Chiodos and many more.

I’ll start with the bad first and get to the good.

To start the album is only available at Hot Topic. I guess while your buying your WWF t-shirts and random but witty saying t-shirts you can pick up this album…

Also because it’s only available at hot topic the videos and songs have all profanity removed from the album, which in my opinion ruins just about every song that has profanity. Songs have profanity for a reason and every time the song is censored it ruins the entire flow of the song or video.

These 2 reasons are why I am rating this album as only a 5. I’m sure the album will sell very well regardless but when it comes to an album I find it offensive that a label would censor their own artists work simply to sell at a specific location. Censoring punk rock? Come on people.

One other thing that bothered me was the DVD/Video section didn’t let you skip videos, you had to manually find each video or go back to the main menu; not a big deal but it’s the little things that you have to watch out for like this.

Now for the good.  The album really has many great bands on the release and I really did enjoy the majority of the bands on this release.  The videos and songs have a great flow between artists.   This album really has a great track listing of bands people have heard of; but at the same time artists people might not have heard of before, but would be interested in.

Another fine point is that 5% of the proceeds will be donated (though the hot topic foundation) which I guess is good; but as I have 0% trust in hot topic as a company doing any good for anyone but themselves you can make your own decision if this is a very good thing.

But regardless of the negative aspects of this album which are really just specific to my opinions I do think “the kids” will enjoy this release. It will have some great bands that I’m sure you all ready like, but will also be a great way for you to find other similar artists that you should get into or at least check out. But most likely if you’re an anti-hot topic person like myself or don’t shop at the malls you will most likely never hear this album.