Head's up: there are no white folks in this band. I was doing some searches for exactly that in an effort to diversify the people I pay to play the one type of music that I like and I came upon this group. The first track, Barricades, is only a minute long, but the video showed promise of a tight pop punk with some recent emo revival elements, so I picked up this single-sided 12" and had some high hopes for the 7 tracks included.

I'd expect if this came out 15ish years ago, these dues would be selling out arenas full of very stylized kids and probably have a very stylized look themselves. The production values are those of the major label pop-emo bands, with everything clear and perfect like the polished mall floors that emos of the 2000's haunted in their heyday. And just like those days, it doesn't seem quite as powerful as it should be. Like it is too controlled to feel authentic. Like it is just a style and not a life, you know what I mean?

Now, don't get me wrong, it is solid and tight and just the way you think it should sound. But there's a lot of this type of thing out there and I'm worried it won't leave a deeper, lasting impression. Maybe I'm too old and jaded and the kids these days are stoked on this. I hope so. I wanted this to be spectacular and it probably couldn't ever live up to those expectations, so the fault is likely mine either way.

If you like this review, you can buy me a coffee.