Oddball Creatures are coming from Lyon, France. They were formed in 2017 but had lots of line-up changes until mid 2019 when this line-up stabilized. This is their new release containing seven songs. With music of Oddball Creatures we can only say, humor, fun and more fun. With songs like ‘Like A Fart In My Mouth’, ‘We Want Beer’ or ‘I Just Need Your Ass’, you know what the lyrical themes are about, or you can just look at t title of the record or the cover picture. Music is melodic punk, leaning more and being more influenced by Ramones three chord attack, playing so called Ramonescore, reminding me a bit of Teenage Bottlerocket and similar bands who play that style of punk rock. Vocals are also a bit over the top, but that is a must when playing music like this one, this is in fact energetic punk rock with three chords and not much philosophy or wisdom. Just plain punk! My personal favorite on this record is ‘We Want Beer’ which has a bit more street punk influenced guitar work and a bit rougher edged vocals. Go have a listen!
Upside Down Man are hailing from Calgary, Canada and this is their debut full length album with High End Denim Records! This little beauty contains ten songs. The music of Upside Down Man is in my opinion more modern version of skate punk/melodic hardcore punk with one leg standing in all those nineties old school Fat and Epitaph influences, but with other leg standing in modern technical skate punk that lots of fans of more technical approach will learn to love and appreciate. If I must compare it to some bands it would be a mixture of Pennywise’s anthemic melodies and catchy songwriting with Strung Out’s metallic technicality. This band provides more complex song structures, some tempo changes, chilling and great guitar hooks and solos and blistering musicianship that only makes you take your hat off. Usually, I am more of a fan of old school nineties influenced skate punk, but this one is enough technical to be modern and superb, also enough catchy to be appealing. Vocalist/guitarist Brook Hadden provides great voice, somehow calm and dramatic at the same time, while backing vocal harmonies do super job, all who read this zine know how important vocals and harmonies are to me when listening to music such as these. Lyrics are personal but you can read a lot of stuff between the lines and relate to them. My personal favorites on this record are ‘Don’t Care’ with that great galloping metallic part prior to solo, also ‘Diablo’ and ‘Chooses No Weapon’, but album as a whole is worth your listening pleasure if you love your skate punk technical yet anthemic and ultra melodic.
Remark are hailing from Quebec, Canada and this is their debut full length album. This band started as an online project of two friends, namely Marco Gurtner – guitar and vocals plus Richard Cloutier – bass and drums. There are 15 songs in all on this one, I must say that I am pleased with how this album turned out. This is fast melodic, anthemic hardcore punk with great harmonies, vocal lines and good songwriting throughout the album, there are no fillers on this one. There are couple of really great melancholic melodies that reminded me of band from Serbia called Six Pack, like awesome song ‘The Process Of Learning’, the title song of the album. In other songs, music of Remark reminds me a bit of Bad Religion in their best era, nineties style Bad Religion, also Swedish No Fun At All and Ten Foot Pole. Lyrics are in three languages, English, French and German, so this is really great international little of a melodic punk jewel of a record. My other personal favorites are ‘Compass’, ‘Unser Land’ and ‘New Horizons’. This is one of the better albums I have listened to in last couple of weeks.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 