When a band starts their bio with the immortal words “a few of our favourite bands are Blink 182, New Found Glory and The Starting Lineâ€, you know full well what you are letting yourself in for. Peterborough’s Blue Box Generation certainly won’t win themselves any friends in the originality stakes, but at least their not playing music with clichéd shouty bits. Ho hum.
Anyway, as it says on the tin, the three-piece play close homage to their heroes with some frill-less pop-punk. It’s done better than most bands – the production is good, the vocals are strong enough without being amazing and the melodies are all in the right places – but it’s just devoid of anything new. Pop-punk bands are ten-a-penny and to stand out you really have to have the knack of writing strong catchy songs. The tracks on offer here (which are nameless as the band didn’t supply a tracklisting) are neither memorable or catchy. That’s not to say they are bad, but there’s nothing which grabs you and makes you want to listen to it again and again.
For a first demo this shows encouraging signs, and for youngsters they are certainly on the right track. Here’s hoping musical maturity will aide these fine fellows on the road to improvement.
www.blueboxgeneration.20m.com
Paul