I waited for a long time to watch this documentary since it came out, but I finally did it and I was not disappointed.
Fat Wreck Chords is one of my all time favourite, if not the favourite record label in the world. Founded in 1991.by Nofx bassist/singer Fat Mike and his now ex wife Erin, this label continues to be an epitome what melodic punk hardcore is all about. The movie describes the begginings with early bands signed, like Lagwagon, No Use For A Name, Propagandhi, Strung Out…and continues until these days with third or fourth generation of Fat bands like The Bombpops, Bad Cop/Bad Cop for example. Through the stories narrated by the band members, Fat Mike, Erin we now know how the Fat sound started to become reality. I loved the Tony Sly part and the interesting part about Propagandhi pissing off Fat Mike when they targeted him in their lyrics because of the disappointment with Fat Mike´s involvement in Punkvoters.com, I won´t say movement, rather initiative when they tried to vote the lesser of two evils to become the next U.S.president. But, what is most important throughout all these 25 years of Fat, the music continues its legacy and every year new and new legions of punk kids discover the beauty of punk scene through Fat Wreck Chords bands that were there and that they are here now. I also owe a great much of my punk upbringings to Fat Mike and Erin and their vision and I will be forever greatfull to them for discovering through their label some of the bands and records that became my all time favourites. Get and watch this one!
Ratbreed is the band from Finland and their new record is coming out via Inverse Records so I was able to listen to it and review it for this webzine.
Finland is the land of metal as everybody knows, this relatively small European country holds a great number of excellent bands be it melodic like Stratovarius, Nightwish, Sonata Arctica or Impaled Nazarene, Finntroll, Children of Bodom, to name only a few more known bands. Ratbreed comes from melodic approach to heavy metal playing a combination between classic pumping heavy metal and fast power metal. This record contains 8 songs plus one cover song by Warlock. The songs sometimes remind of the 80-ies classics for example Helloween or Gamma Ray and early Hammerfall in the second half of the 90-ies. Vocalist Jasmin is convincing with her voice and not trying to sound like anyone´s copy so, that is another plus for this band. Musically, the band is incredibly tight and the production of the record sounds great like a metal record of this kind should sound like. My personal favorites of the record are “Blaze from Below” and “Through the flames”. This is nothing new or special or revolutionary but it is a decent metal album.
A Second Plan are hailing from Venice, California and this is their new record out on Tichiboy. I am glad that I had the chance to review this one.
Many bands are just plain copycats today and they only tried to copy paste their favourite bands and albums. That is not the case with A Second Plan. There are 13 songs on this album and the music this band plays is a mixture of nostalgic ride along the 90-ies skatepunk road. I totally managed to feel the bond to all the bands that I listened when I was a kid in the 90-ies. On the other hand, A Second Plan manages to sound modern with excellent guitar work and melodic hardcore song structures. There are also some almost metal, Propagandhi-esque influences that I could hear while listening to this album. But, it still manages to maintain the melodrama, happiness, energy, warmth, love and everything else that´s reason why skatepunk is besides horrorpunk the best music in the world! Top songs:”Sirens”, “Vultures” and “Heads you win, tails I lose”.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 