Wow! I think this is the first time for a band from Indonesia to grace the pages of our zine. The Battlebeats just released their debut e.p. and it is a blast! This is in fact a one man band but it loses no momentum having only one person at the controls. This e.p contains 6 songs one of them being a cover by the Japanese band called Teengenerate. The Battlebeats play a fine mixture of raw and fast punk with some garage punk elements like in I´m Just A Piece Of Shit. I love more the straight forward fast punk songs like You Stabbed Me In The Back or The Got Mad At Me. In all, this is such a fine debut e.p. with quality punk songs and I am glad having listened to this one and presented it for our zine.
Strung Out are back with a new record. Four years after the last full length the guys have a new drummer and new full length record for our listening pleasure.
These guys have come a long way from their skatepunk beginnings as they play now a metalic and technical version of skatepunk which influenced so many bands. There are 13 new songs on this record and my feelings are divided after listening to it a couple of times now. Some songs are really superb with a lot of catchy melodies and beautiful riffs in the song structures like for example Rebels and Saints, Under the Western Sky, Monuments or Hammer Down, but too bad the whole album is not like that. There are some songs in which Strung Out kinda slow down and take almost poppy approach to the songs, still staying too technical to be pop punk and too poppy to be hardcore punk. So, this album is of course a must for all the hardcore fans of the band, but it is just another record in the band´s opus, nothing to remember them by. It is better than the last one, but not as good as Exile in Oblivion for example. Still, there are more good songs than boring ones here.
What I love about this band is that they do not complicate things in their music and the song structures. They rather play old school no holds barred fast and melodic 90-ies influenced skatepunk/hardcore with fast drums, melodic vocals and backing vocal harmonies, catchy guitar riffs, anthemic choruses made for singalong and overall great vibe on their record. This 15 new songs are just made for you to feel better and smile when listening to the music which really saves and makes your day great. The songs I would recommend to you among others as the highlights of the record are: Cobalt, Visualize, Trying to find you and Wanted more. This is a great record and I am happy how this band progressed and became even better since their last record.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 