I toyed between giving this 3 and 3.5 but at the last minute opted for the lower score. In truth it’s probably slap bang in the middle of the two grades, so I’d suggest logging on to myspace to check them out and make up your own mind. Dick Truth (who have an appalling name) are a melodic hardcore/skate punk hybrid that mix up some fast and furious riffs with plenty of raw aggression. And in small doses it works pretty well – opener ‘Inferno of Youth’ takes a few seconds to get going but sounds great apart from a heavily ripped off Silverchair-esque chorus (“we are the youth” indeed…), while ‘Chaos Theory’ is pure, unadulterated, flat out fantastic.
The thing for me is that the seven songs here don’t have all that much variation or originality, so while they sound excellent on first listen, some of the tracks dropped off my radar on repeated listens. The intro to ‘Kevlar’ is too long and the riff reminds me of a speeded up Rx Bandits track, while ‘Balance:Imbalance‘ also sounds a bit familiar. There’s certainly talent on show here, but I’m not sold that it’s used as well as it could be. Seven songs, all of a reasonable standard, but I think there’s room for improvement. Crafting song structures rather than just blasting through songs at a million miles per hour would be a start…
www.myspace.com/dicktruth
paul