Spent a lot of time with this album, turning over what to say about it. On the face of it, it’s kinda simple (“just great punk rock, man”) but the deeper I dig into it the harder it becomes to identify what makes it click like it does. Sure, the songs are sharp and tersely-constructed, and I’ve been a sucker for Matt Weeks’ urgent, eloquent vocal delivery for more years than I really care to remember, but it goes beyond that. There’s something primal and archetypal about the whole thing, I guess? Because while it’s possible to lob in some ballpark comparisons (Articles Of Faith definitely; Books Lie maybe) there’s a sense of individuality here that you don’t come across too often. Rather than trying to tap a specific sound or style-of-the-day Wrong War seem to be taking the idea of hardcore and inhabiting their own space, in the same way you imagine bands were back when this was all kicking off: angry folks trying to figure out what a faster, harder, meaner take on The Clash or The Sex Pistols might sound like, rather than aping an earlier band who’d already tried to do just that. Beyond this, yeah, it’s just great punk rock: desperate, furious, political, sick of the state of things but still with a spark of hope that they could, perhaps, be better. I really love it.