With a nice little name, stunning artwork and some stomping beats thrown in for good measure, my first impressions of Europe’s Paint the Town Red were nothing but sparkling. I’m usually a hardcore skeptic and am certainly fussier over it than say I am with the old pop punk. But as Das Oath so ably proved earlier in the week, if done well bands such as this will find there CD’s in my player for a long time after that important first session.
While Das Oath proved how to make pacy melodic hardcore with their self titled effort, ‘Paint.. ‘ go down the more tried and tested route of combining said melody with more crunching breakdowns and cutting arrangements. It all equates to a strong and competent album, but one that doesn’t really push any boundaries. While the cutting and snappy ‘Personally To The White House And All The Way Back To The Reichstag’ opens it in fine fashion, the rest is painfully generic and doesn’t really pull you in, the way an album such as this needs to.
At times it does teeter rather to closely to being lumped as metalcore (Beauty in Despair) but it just about pulls it around for that distinctive hardcore punk sound as the likes of ‘Streets of Munich Call My Name’ stomp critics such as myself to whatever hole we crawled out of. Lyrically the band can’t be faulted and put their first foot firmly forward in the face of controversy with the likes of ‘We are Fuck You’ and ‘The Fighting Years’ making plainly obvious statements about today’s society. Indeed, ‘Four Word Battle Hymn’ is particularly eye opening as you may of guessed the lyrics contain only four words. “Rise. Fight. Fuck you.†It is a rather fantastic and hate filled 1.29 and proves perfect fodder for the final track.
Whether this release will maintain a healthier shelf life than its many competitors will be up for debate long into the night. It’s strong without being eye opening and poor without simply being dumped on the used pile, but for those who love their hardcore crunching and unforgiving this maybe right up your street.
Jay
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