I was going to start with a pun, because the sound quality of ‘swin.point.five’ is pretty scratchy, and the band are called Built From Scratch, but I thought that would be pretty weak and a somewhat lazy way to start a review so I’m not going to. Instead I’m going to state that Built From Scratch are, even with the somewhat substandard recording, a hugely promising band.
Obviously, there’s a limit to how much you can gauge a band’s potential on the strength of a four track EP, but it speaks volumes that BFS can make their limitations pretty irrelevant by coming up with the goods. Opener ‘Messed Up’ is a full on melodic punk number in the vein of Strung Out or early Lagwagon and what impressed me most was the confident structuring – the song doesn’t descend into the tried and tested verse-chorus-verse formula, instead BFS choose to make sure there’s always a squealing guitar line or squelchy (blame the production) bass riff to keep things interesting. ‘Thirty Two Blew Out’ continues in the same tradition but has the added benefit of being insanely catchy without being annoying or predictable.
‘swin.point.five’ is hardly the most astounding demo I’ve ever released and it didn’t make me scream from the rooftops but it put a big smile on my face because of the sheer weight of potential on display. BFS need a bit of time and money to come up with a release that does them justice, and it’s a testament to their abilities that even with the sonic equivalent of ‘Fisher Price My First Recording Studio’ they can impress this cynical bastard. Give ‘em a year and they could be a bit special.
Ben
www.builtfromscratch.net