I always smell a rat when a press release focuses more on where the band are from, or the producer's history, rather than the band itself. So you'll have to forgive me for being five months late in reviewing this record, simply because I'd been put off before I'd even started listening to it. For the record, A Day in Black and White come from Washington DC, so you can imagine a release littered with references to Fugazi, Rites of Spring and loads of other seminal punk bands. The only occasion ADIBAW will ever be uttered in the same breath as those bands is when someone is saying they're from the same city.
Kurt Ballou recorded this CD incidentally. Again, the only time you'll ever mouth ADIBAW in the same breath as bands such as Converge and Cave In is when you mention Kurt twiddled knobs on records by all three bands. 'Notes' is so boring I could quite easily have nodded off part way through track four. Seriously, 'Lame Duck' is so bad someone should put it out of its misery with a bullet to the head. Getting through 11 tracks was pretty tortuous to be honest - tepid DC punk-by-numbers, and even then done badly.
Now you can see why publicists focus on more imteresting things when trying to sell a record, can't you?
www.dayinblackandwhite.com
Level Plane Records
paul
