Labels: Raise Your Fist
Review by: Joe Callaghan
They’re not pretty-boy indie or from Australia like Andy said. After a mix-up in URL’s, This particular After The Fall are raucous Punk Rock from across the pond. It’s tacky and corny. It’s got that double time drum beat you heard on all those old No Use For A Name records and shreddy metal riffs. Excellent musicianship, slick production, equal parts fast shouty bits and slower melodic bits. It’s still almost unlistenable to my picky lugholes. It sounds as much like Propagandhi as it does The Offspring, which is kind of weird. Melodic hardcore seems to be going through some strange phase where it thinks it has to be all sentimental and mushy, which makes it end up sounding a bit like Bon Jovi. Thwarting for the most part. The opening track wasn’t so hard to swallow. It was about Police. Not Sting. The Five-O. So, you can predict how that pans out. “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT AND SERVE BUT YOU DIDN’T”! Okay, that wasn’t the truth. It was crap. Second track in, the screaming stops, and some Tom Delonge sound-alike steps in and painfully whinges “Do you remember that Millencolin record?” and a chorus of Walmart hardcore youths yell “I’LL NEVER FORGET!!!!!!”. Hi, lunch from 5 hours ago. Why are you back in my gob? True vomit inducing bilge of the highest order. It’s like if Fat Wreck Chords was bought out by Disney, and they had to write songs to soundtrack the scenes from Hollyoaks involving those overly chirpy goth toddlers whilst they “get off’ and talk about the world ending, or whatever it is they do, all the while, this insufferable, nasally riff punk is blaring out in the background, corrupting their youth as they begrudge the soulless conformists of the village. The exact polar opposite of worthy. The taker-away of good times. From Andy’s description, I was expecting inoffensive, average indie parp, where I could just say how mundane it is, in a coy, sly way where you wouldn’t be able to tell if I even liked it or not. But instead, I get this unexpected toilet-water jack-in-the-box. Less of a surprise, and more of a cruel, distasteful practical joke. This was fucking rubbish.