Reviews

River Monster

Bedlam Hour Win a Billion Dollars! CD

BEDLAM HOUR’s interpretation of melodic HC/punk is slick and professional-sounding, with all the rough edges smoothed away. In the past, it’s what might have been described as “commercial,” although I don’t know if that still applies. They jettisoned the abrasive, imperfect, and confrontational qualities associated with the genre, but kept some of its musical landmarks (power chords, relative brevity, etc.), polished the distortion, tightened the delivery, and cleaned up the recording. And Win a Billion Dollars! is clean. So clean you could eat off of it (if you choose to).

Brandy & the Butcher Pretty Girls / Mr. Dorite 7″

A couple of tough rock’n’roll tracks from this South Carolina band. This reminds me of that wave of bands in the late ’80s that were hard rock but claimed to be punk influenced. They do a decent job here, but this just doesn’t do much for me. Maybe I’m missing the bar band appeal?

Forty Two Beeblebrox CD

I love the cover of this, as it reminds me of an AVAIL record. But that is it. Only the cover reminds me of AVAIL. I don’t want anyone picking this up and thinking it is anything like AVAIL. Musically, oh man, this is fine. I appreciate the effort, but it falls into medio-core sonically. There are six songs on here, and I think they should have tossed these out and maybe recorded their thirty through thirty-sixth songs. I just can’t get a feel of what the band is about. They are hitting all the notes, the lyrics are clear, some of the songs are driving, with gang vocals, and through all that, I’m just not convinced that they even know what they want. Regionally, I bet their shows pack the house. Maybe FORTY TWO should break up, or maybe switch instruments clockwise one band member. Listen to the link and you decide.

Soy City Stranglers Midwest Rock N Roll EP

Four doses of fast and furious Midwestern hardcore punk. Tasteful touches of metal (the slow bit in “Counting the Days” into the “let’s go” that brings back the charge is especially choice) and lots of single-note guitar picking à la Filthy Phil, and then they drop serious tonnage on the hardcore breakdowns. Q: What do you get when you combine testosterone, beer, full stacks, and denim? A: SOY CITY STRANGLERS.