After being proclaimed as the best live band to come out of Britain for years by a Russian national paper and receiving good reviews in magazines like Rolling Stone I’m hard pushed to guess why the majority of people who read the site won’t have heard of this lot, especially after providing support for the Chili Peppers to Rancid and even appearing on CD:UK! The only reason I can think of is they have little in common with what comes under ‘punk’ today as GOLD BLADE have more in common with The Clash and 1977 than with 2005 and Fall Out Boy.
As you may be able to guess from the opening paragraph, GOLD BLADE thrash out their music like it’s the late seventies; simplistic on the technical side of things, strong in the melody stakes and mild in political stance. It’s a winning combination that has really beaten the test of time as Green Day have more than shown in the last year. GOLD BLADE have racked up a few chart bothering hits in their time (they’ve been going since the mid 90’s) and I can see why; the band clearly have a penchant for writing novelty pop-punk songs, ‘Fighting in the Dancehall’ with it’s infectious group-vocalled chorus and the almost football chant-like ‘The Decline and Fall of Ancient Rome’ would no doubt near the Top 40 if it had the right label backing.
It would be too good to be true if there wasn’t a ‘but…’ somewhere in this review and whilst GOLD BLADE do hit score fairly well with this record there’s a few things that put me off a tad. If this album came out 20 years ago I’m sure it’d be a massive success, however things have changed a lot since those days musically and the style just sounds dated; there’s nothing here Rancid weren’t doing 10 years ago and nothing The Clash weren’t doing a decade and a half before that. I’m not saying because it’s not a innovative release I’m marking it down, it’s just not got enough novelty to score any higher with me. The mild political slant is also something I take issue with as the lyrics are all a bit cringe worthy across the entire album. Again this isn’t really a massive problem but thought provoking and clever lyrics from a politically edged band are always appreciated.
All in all this isn’t a bad release in the slightest. It’s not something I would usually choose to listen to but I’m a sucker for a big chorus and by golly, this record has them in abundance. Like I was hinting at previously, this record isn’t going to put GOLD BLADE down as a pioneering band in punk history, but it is one of the best recent ‘old-school’ releases I’ve heard.
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-Mike