The ridiculous flourish of releases from Lockjaw records continues (I swear every month I get one or two in my review pile) with this mini album from Leeds’ own Nanas Revenge. Sketchy name aside, the band are heart-on-sleeves northern punk rock. You can hear their influences pretty damn clearly – these are guys bought up on Strung Out and NUFAN.
They can play their instruments and the tunes are solid slabs of melodi-core, in the vein of Failsafe. The problem I have listening to it is that they are so like Failsafe in places that it’s a little freakish. The difference between the bands is merely that Nanas Revenge come across as cruising on auto-pilot on this record – the passion isn’t quite there. It isn’t stretching for me and it doesn’t sound quite like they’ve made enough of their talents.
Mini-albums always get the alarm bells ringing for me. Sometimes they work because a band is best in it’s rawest form, and they fall away afterwards. With this lot, it sounds like the best is yet to come. Solid, but not more than a homage to the bands they clearly love.
Mike