A different take on punk this time, with what sounds like a precursor to skate-punk that wouldn’t sound out of place in the soundtrack to a tricks video. It’s fast paced American hardcore punk with vocalist Ian MacKaye sounding like a more garage version of Blink-182. Some of the tracks are comparatively long for punk, around 3 minutes. Betray, for example, even manages to take in a tempo change – it's a prog-rock odyssey by punk standards.
The lyrics represent less of the usual angst and dissatisfaction at the world of the punk that we’ve had up until now, and are more of an attack on such lazy nihilism – as the song Sob Story says “I’m fed up with your pissing and moaning. Boo-fucking-hoo".
As is often the case with this kind of music, it gets a little wearing quite quickly, even though the songs are pleasingly varied, sometimes within the comparatively short confines of each song. This is also more of an EP than a full album – probably the shortest one yet at a grand total of 21 and a half minutes for the lot. Which is quite the punk aesthetic – say what you want to say, do what you want to do, and get out, no dragging things on with 10-minute guitar solos and endless noodling. Compare and contrast it to the previous album from Violet Femmes and it’s interesting to see the evolutionary divergence from punk roots of music in very different directions.
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