Pros and cons. On one hand, you’ve got a pretty smoking LP that sounds like a pitch-perfect melding of riff-heavy hardcore-leaning stuff like Career Suicide and early Fucked Up, and ‘70s Dangerhouse stuff. This is a seriously rad album, and fans of most of the rest of Deranged’s catalog will certainly be stoked. It’s solid. The questionable thing is that the album was produced by Jonah Falco—of, yep, Fucked Up and Career Suicide. Hell, And Now This was apparently recorded in the practice space those two bands share. I mean, both of those bands have penned some awesome songs, but it does beg the question just how much input Falco had in writing or arranging And Now This. I’d like to believe very little, but there are some striking similarities even beyond guitar tones and production styles. There are certain sonic tricks here that bring to mind both of those bands; certain repetitive lyrical phrasings and repetitions, the guitar line buried under the distortion in “Most Days.” What I mean is, these dudes really sound like Fucked Up at times. Hell, “Paranoid Times” sounds musically almost exactly like Fucked Up’s “Generation.” Taken solely on its own—and many would argue that as a reviewer that’s exactly what I should be doing—And Now This is a collection of undeniably great songs. But I’m also left to wonder just how heavily they’re wearing their influences here.
–keith (Deranged)