It’s not often I come across proper punk these days but when I saw this CD with its old school punk artwork I hazarded a pretty good guess as to what this album would sound like. That may be a bit presumptuous of me, but if there are any clichés about this now fairly disregarded genre they were all met without even listening to the CD. Fortunately, the album is a lot better than I expected.
An eighteen track album is quite a heavy load to take in as a listener and considerably quite harder to pull off successfully as a band but PSYCHOTIC REACTION have had a good stab at it. Essentially they ply their trade with the classic punk formula; short, sharp and to the point. If this band isn’t happy about something they’ll let you know, for example the lyrics in ‘Two Faced’; “You’re two faced you fucking bastard…motherfucker…burn in hell…fucking cunt†etc. Whilst this brash and often distasteful lyricism can seem childish I suppose it is potent and direct which compliments the music effectively if nothing else.
What I’ve come to notice with this record is that for all its good points it has bad points. Basically it uses the typical limited chord progression well and again very effectively with admirably structured songs containing aggressive rhythms and even angrier vocals. Whilst this is all good it can be countered with the fact that the same pace and old formula on every song after 10 tracks becomes a tad tiresome now matter how well executed it is. There’s just nothing particularly challenging or new about this record which places itself in a genre which hasn’t really been developed since RANCID slightly modernised it over 10 years ago now; image and style included.
But, while it seems I may have been a little harsh here, this is not a bad release. It’s very consistent and as mentioned PSYCHOTIC REACTION do execute their music well. A bit too long maybe but the major fault in my eyes is the lack of variety on display throughout what is a lengthy release track-wise. Whilst this is where I think they go wrong, die hard fans of the genre will no doubt lap it up until the cows come home; afterall it’s been over twenty five years already.
www.psychoticreaction.net
Mike