The Pond is also, as I can understand a one girl band from San Francisco. When describing the music, they use the term gay girl synth pop. In fact it is a mixture of synth pop and pop punk leaning more into synth pop side of things with fast tracks like ‘Rock In My Shoe’, being dancable and having such haunting melodies like ‘I Like U’. In all, this is a short one, five songs in no more than six minutes record with short and sweet pop punk/synth punk songs and eerie, at times haunting vocal melodies. This would sound average with guitars, but this way it sounds more interesting. This one is definitely not for your every day listening. Different, yet interesting and lasting just long enough not to get boring.
Possessed Politicians is currently a one man band from Frederick, Maryland, USA. You know, sometimes when you sail through the sea of great and good bands you step on a mine. This is one of such mines. There are six songs on this one, This is really a short one with longest song being just one minute thirty seconds long, all others are shorter. The music is not so bad melodic hardcore punk with many rehashed riffs and nothing special, but not bad. Vocals are just killing me, man. The guy sings through some electronic effect or bad microphone and although there are songs like ‘I Can’t Understand The Lyrics’ or ‘Rambo Hates Vietnamese People’, which are pretty funny titles and lyrics are all about humor and black humor, this one is plain bad. Hope it will improve with future releases.
Have No Heroes were already featured on the pages of this webzine when we reviewed one of their records a while ago. This is a four piece melodic hardcore punk band from Riga, Latvia. We can almost safely call them Latvian Pennywise because that is the band of which their music reminds me the most. Not that they copied it, but with hardcore punk energy which bursts from the songs, speed, great vocal melodies and backing vocal harmonies and above all, great songwriting. This one contains an intro plus twelve songs of uplifting spirit, melodic skate punk hardcore and I enjoyed every single minute of it. These guys are also great musicians, there are couple of superb guitar solos and hooks on this beauty like in awesome ‘No Regrets’. Lyrics are smartly written and they are personal but also deal with scene, genre, there are also political themes if you read between the lines and these songs somehow give hope for better tomorrow. When I listen to this one, it is no holds barred, no philosophy, nineties style influenced melodic hardcore punk with Pennywise, Good Riddance and No Use For A Name immediately falling on my mind. It is so hard to tell some songs as highlights because album as a whole is fantastic, but I will try: ‘No Regrets’, ‘Funeral Of The Genre’, ‘Better Way’, ‘Divide And Conquer’, ‘Final Destination’, damn that is already almost half of the album. One of the best releases in this genre to come out this year.
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