For a threesome, Essex’s Hijinx can make a bit of a din. For 18-year-olds too, the standard of their musicianship is even more impressive. Coming across like a mix of Silverchair/InMe-esque ‘metal’ (term used loosely!) with a slew of boring UK ’emo’ bands such as The Holiday Plan (term used even looser!), the band do their thing very well, even if their thing has been covered by too many bands already. In mentioning those names, you can probably imagine that this is the sort of band, and the kind of sound, that Kerrang, Metal Hammer et al will be rejoicing and declaring the ‘saviours of the UK rock scene’ or something. Truth be told they do a really unimaginitive thing pretty well – and that’s about it.
This EP goes through all of the genre cliches – and probably invents a few new ones too. The choruses are reasonably melodic, but after listening to this a few times I couldn’t actually remember any of the words. The guitars build up and creep down again, as is standard, while the vocals switch from sing to scream more times than Abi Titmuss gets her baps out. Everything is in the right place and everything is done to a reasonable standard, but the world doesn’t need another band like this. Worth checking out if they played your local, but I doubt they’ll change the world – even if later this year the mainstream is telling you they will.
www.hijinxmusic.com
Zachary Black Records
Paul