11th Hour are a four-piece from Kingston upon Thames who play a poppy brand of skate-punk, heavily influenced by the mid-90’s bands on Fat Wreck and Epitaph. They’re a band that have worked hard over the last year to try and nail a sound and ‘To hell With Love’ is the four-track fruits of their labour. It’s not a bad little record, showing plenty of promise, but it does have many aspects which show up their relative youth and musical immaturity.
Lyrically the band sometimes struggle to get past the most basic of lines as rhymes are forced and the vocals sometimes go off-key. Of course pop-punk has usually been about daft lyrics and silly subjects, so odes to women called ‘Fiona’ should probably be expected. In the mean, each song is performed reasonably well, without ever setting the world alight. I say the same thing in every demo review that I do – there are so many bands out there that you really have to excel to stand out, and while 11th Hour are certainly better than most bands, they are leagues away from the Captain Everything‘s of this world, let alone their US peers. Full marks for effort, a C+ for attainment.
www.11thhouronline.co.uk
Paul