Review by: Toby
I never really got on board with the 90s skate-punk bands (crap pun not intended), they always seemed to have one good thing going for each of them but never really seemed to progress beyond that; Pulley had the technical thing going on, Lagwagon had the heartfelt lyrics, Bad Religion had the brains, Pennywise had the”¦catchy logo? But Good Riddance were a band who I really wanted to be able to invest more into; they had a way of putting political opinions across that didn’t patronise whilst never going near the crucifixion of the English language that is Anti-Flag. However the big obstacle for me was that whilst Good Riddance had some great music going on, it just never really moved on for me, it was always 100mph and sometimes I just wanted some bounce to my riffs.
Well along comes the new Abolitionist LP (you saw that coming right?), for me this is the good stuff, all the riffs but it bringing the melody and the brains with it. If Good Riddance had taken a couple of steps forward with their music (perhaps listened to some Dillinger Four) or to put it another way if Propagandhi had listened to less Megadeth, gone less Deliverance and just kept going on the good path after “Today’s Empires”¦’ they might have made something like this.
Don’t get me wrong it’s not 100% perfect, sometimes the jump from the faster hardcore songs like “Don’t Call it a Coup’ to the None More Black sounding rifforama that is “Little Pieces’ can be a little jarring but it’s not a massive issue (a 7″ of the faster stuff would be amazing mind) but overall this is a great LP (and coming in at the 20 minute mark is always a good thing in my eyes).
The finest moment on this record for me is “Tattoo’ which really shows (I hope) a great future for this band, if you were into the awesome The Insurgent then this would be the song to dip into, just a notch behind mid paced with drawn out feedback guitar really letting you hear the vocals (which incidentally, thankfully never even approach gruff, instead having a clearer cutting sound “” like Eric from D4 through a chorus pedal).
So there we have it, I hope that this lot come over to the UK at some point and even more so that there’s still an audience for a band like this.