Weapons Of Mass Distortion,
My So-Called BandI struggle to see the point in this release. It’s eight tracks of common-as-muck old school punk in the vein of The Ramones with a scratchier vocal but it’s rendered painfully obsolete by the time it’s even started. There comes a time when you have to draw a line, when singing about ‘worthy’ topics is not enough to actually merit any kind of attention. To be fair, My So-Called Band do try and cover some ‘contentious’ topics, but how many bands have recently released songs about the unfairness of capitalism, or missing WMDs, or the repressive nature of the US State Department and the Patriot Acts etc? Does that make this release more important than anything else, because the music is second-rate punk rock that’s been peddled for something like twenty years now and won’t win any plaudits on its own?
I usually champion this kind of music because I like to see bands making the effort to try and effect some kind of social change, but when the lyrics are as predictable as “Better watch out the government has its eye on you / Shoot you down if you’re not red, white and blue” you start begging for a shred of originality. Again, you’re weighed down by the fact that it’s hard to criticise a band who are speaking their minds but there comes a point when you have to divorce the supposed worthyness of the cause and wonder why a song so crudely dull as ‘Rachel Corrie’ is even in existence? Who’s going to listen to a message packaged in a interminably boring, repetitive and painfully unoriginal format such as this? The UK band Jester have shown themselves to be able to muster some kind of bite and vitality in this exact genre, but MS-CB are just crap.
Ben
www.mysocalledband.com
www.suicidewatchrecords.com
