Four Year Strong – Rise Or Die Trying
Rarely have I heard a band so openly imitate the sound of another. If you’re going to do this at least pick a half decent band, but if you’re going to imitate Fall Out Boy, you really are asking for trouble. This and the fact that they can’t seem to decide if they want to be a full on hardcore assault of your senses as in the track ‘Heroes Get Remembered, Legends Never Die’ or a tame pop punk band as in ‘Catastrophe’.
It’s obvious that they’re influences are probably from the hardcore/ thrash mould of bands they adhere to but then time and time again they lapse into that annoying pop punk ‘Bowling For Soup’ style whine I’m sure you’re all familiar with. I don’t really know which is worse, but they could do us all a favour and make their own bloody mind up. Oh but wait, like the aforementioned band they could win you over by being really funny…..the front cover has an image of a wizard riding an octopus and attacking a load of sharks and they have songs with such irresistibly witty titles as ‘Bada Bing! Wit A Pipe’. God help us if music has come to this.
Where ‘Four Year Strong’ try to encompass aspects of mainstream pop punk music with underground thrash they only come across as desperate wannabes that are scared to go embrace either scene; fearful of abandoning their hardcore roots so they can tell themselves they’re doing it for the music, and then fearful to stick to the hardcore sound in case they don’t appeal to the masses. It may be a clever marketing ploy that could well seem them take over America, become millionaires and knock Fall Out Boy off their perch of being the ‘worlds most annoying band’.
Id like to say that for now I’ll take solace in the fact that it wont receive many warm reviews in the UK, but as history tells us music like this often has contagious undertones that means negative reviews simply aren’t enough to keep it off the airwaves.