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.
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.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 