Hey, this ain’t bad! I’m sure we music reviewers would all tell you that we don’t do this, but I must confess: I tend to size up everything I get by the way it looks. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time I’m pretty dead on. If it looks like a turd, it generally is. I had this pegged for some overly slick “rock’n’roll” that just stole parts from older bands to great critical acclaim. Don’t know why I thought that, because looking back at the CD, it now elicits no emotional reaction whatsoever. Just some dudes standing there with a really plain logo, like they want to let the music speak for itself. And it is rock’n’roll—and I can spot some riffs/melodies that they lifted from other sources—but, who hasn’t? (And there’s nothing overly slick here either.) These dudes are just rockin,’ and it sounds like they’re enjoying themselves. One singer sounds like Joan Jett (only it’s a guy) and one sounds like Lou Reed. There are some actually genuinely enjoyable guitar solos. (I have never written those words in a review before!) This isn’t anything genius or original at all, and I get the feeling I might listen back to it years from now and it won’t have any impact on me whatsoever. It’s just nice to be so wrong. I was expecting to have to slog my way through this to get a review, when it was really pretty enjoyable.
–Ryan Horky (Livid, lividrecords.com)