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.
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.
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 