I can normally count on Death Wish to bring me the goods, so I am giving this punk trio a shot. The opening song finds the Oakland band staying with the bounds of frenetic energy and anger that you would expect of punk, with very little surprises. "Keeper" comes at you in more of a Ramones like pace with a little more melody coming from the guitars and the vocals in a lower despondent tone before they go up into her shriek. They are back with more adolescent snot to "Losing You" which is a little less engaging. "You Don't Tell Me " has a darker more sonic riff that is more dynamic and gets them out of the tangent of the first three songs. "Luxury" isn't redefining the wheel punk spins on. The guitar has more hook to it than the first three songs.
"Time and Distance" barrels straight forward like punk should. The guitars have more texture in the production than your average punk clamor so that is worth something. Two minutes there are some dissonant accents, but not much more. "Muted" blasts off with old school one, two, three go! like energy. Of course since this is punk we are talking about short and sweet songs around the three minute mark. "Broken" has some unhinged melodic embellishments and fueled by lots of kinetic energy. The two minute what are you going to do is more of an explosion fueled with an angular punch. At this time the high pitched punk vocals had become monotonous. "Don't Look Up" is more melody and almost feels like something the Foo-fighters would do, mixed in with a little Sonic Youth. "Everything" has more melodic value than the bulk of the album crammed into it.
The title track is more sonically searing, but from a song writing perspective doesn't bring much more to the table. I'll give this album a 7.5, it sounds great as far as the guitar tones and it's sonic swathe, but the songs all sound too similar the majority of the time, but so does most punk.
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