Labels: Adagio830
Review by: Andy Malcolm
We can safely say that the emo resurgence from a few years ago has pretty much died away now. There seems to be far fewer bands ploughing those paths and it’ll probably be that way until we get another Yaphet Kotto come along and blow everyone away, inspiring people to play that kind of music again. Fire Team Charlie unfortunately won’t be the band to do that, although this 10″ is a vast improvement on their songs on the split 12″ with Damezumari. FTC sound like a European type emo band on here with lots of spiralling melodic guitars that are given a nudge along by the well formed basslines. The vocals are desperate and tearful, coupling that with the music makes me think that this sounds fairly similar to Kids Return. It’s solid stuff, but I would be more inclined to “big this up” if they leaned more heavily on the mid 90s. It’s a strange mix as songs like “So Now He Trudges” initially make me cringe with the racing, almost metally guitar parts and uber cheesey bass, but suddenly this song turns up the taste as it drops the pace right off and the song gets awesome and moody before exploding. And during the quiet bit they’re mixing in some old blues record. I am pretty certain they know what they are doing here, but seriously, we all know who did this first, is any emo band allowed to get away with doing that nowadays? Given their clear roots and influences, it’s also pretty funny to see the band has a song called “PC Punks Fuck Off”. I get where they are coming from on this song, there are plenty of people who don’t have an opinion bar that which they think that being a punk has deemed they should have, but I know various people who believe utterly in those opinions and can back them to the hilt – fully formed by experience and thought. There is minimal room for an explanation on the lyric sheet and the photocopy is atrocious anyway, so it’s possible their stance is not limited to the rather basic view expressed here and implied by the song title, but it does make me roll my eyes a touch. They do have an SXE song though, which is pretty old school.
Overall, this is a solid ten. Given the paucity of ‘mo records coming out these days, you may as well pick this one up as Fire Team Charlie do a really decent job with it, much better than I was expecting at least.