Five songs of RAMONES-inspired pop punk. Nothing groundbreaking here. Your standard RAMONES-core fare, although the tempo of these songs is much slower than they probably should be for this type of stuff. If this was a bit more peppy, it’d serve them well. The cover art’s nod to the Henry Rollins book that this EP is named after was kinda “ha-ha” funny.
Pop-punk-ish growls, sneers, and power chords abound here. This is a really ubiquitous combo, but something about this CD feels distinctly ’90s. Maybe it’s the polished and poppy guitars sprinkled with a touch of Epitaph-style hardcore? Maybe it’s the cover? Maybe it’s the CD format? A good-natured, meatheaded ride.
The biggest crime of this record is that it’s boring. I have a feeling, based on their album title, that they are aware. Everything about this is amateurish. That first song’s drumming is atrocious. Anyways, this is the latest occurrence of scraping the bottom of the “punk nostalgia” barrel. Did you or someone you know listen to bands like the QUEERS, SCREECHING WEASEL, and…OK, everyone stop. Hang on a second. They have a song called “January 6 (The Most Idiotic Day in Modern American History).” It’s also bad, but what a title! The pacing is boring and the lyrics are pretty cringe. I feel I need to break it to you that romanticized pop punk is not the best venue to recruit political activists. And in the very next song, you sing about how your girl gets “five stars from your heart.” It’s super tone-deaf. Thanks for being on the right side of history, but, like, make a PROPAGANDHI-worship band instead. Based on their Bandcamp description, they are not taking this very seriously: “Three neighborhood dads in need of a hobby, united united in a quest to fend off boredom, attain unfulfilled juvenile dreams, and make use of those dusty instruments, all while trying not to piss off the neighbors.” Also, by the way, the drumming starts to suck again on “I Don’t Sleep a Lot.” No thanks.
