2020 and still punk’s not dead, although usually survival entails some degree of evolution. Citing The Clash, Green Day, and The Sex Pistols as the reference points or their punk credentials, it seems Kyle Peters’ post-Ferocious Dog outfit is more interested in recreating the spirit of the old garde (in the same way Gren Day were when they started out waaaay back, before the punk revival really took off) than pushing forward. They’ve played alongside several major players of the original wave, including The Buzzcocks and Boomtown Rats, which is cool and all, but one has to wonder what demographic they’re aiming for here.
The three tracks on this, their second release, are solid, perfectly passable pieces of punk rock. There’s plenty of energy, but the menacing bass and choppy guitar snarl that make up the opening bars of ‘Man Down’ and have a certain Therapy? style punch soon slip to formula, with bog-standard ‘woooah-ooooh’ backing vocals.
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The energy is certainly there, and they’ve kept the production punchy and the guitar solos brief. They redeem themselves with the riffy throb of the final cut, ‘House of Thieves’: it’s meaty, and despite more annoying backing vocals, it’s got some proper bite and sees the band demonstrate that they are capable of injecting new life into the old established forms.
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