Break The Silence
"Near Life Experience" CD (Hopeless)
It's not that this predictable, metallic, Fat-styled punk featuring former members of Rise Against and 88 Fingers Louie is bad - it just isn't interesting. Sure, it's melodic. Sure, it sounds like No Use For A Name and Lagwagon (so much so that I wondered if Boss had started making a Fat effects stompbox). Sure, it has an At The Gates cover. However, there is very little here to distinguish this album as something new, to fix it at any point in time other than the mid-1990s and at any place other than Southern California. If you're young and want to reminisce about how mainstream punk sounded 10 years ago while still purchasing something new, this album is perfect. If you're anything like me, you should skip to the next review which, for the record, is exactly what I'm doing.