This is very quickly becoming one of my favourite releases of the year. If you’re from the Staring Back, No Use For A Name, Bigwig and early-Over It school of pop-punk (read – fast and furious with a slightly technical edge), then Much The Same will really be the band for you. From the very first listen, this is a record that just stands out, grabs you by the balls and begs you to listen, playing air guitar all the while and mimicking those twiddy metal parts with an imaginary foot-on-the-monitor pose. I guess you could cross Bigwig with Strike Anywhere‘s political leanings to get another (lazy) comparison.
There are so many good tracks here I really don’t know where to start. ‘The Greatest Betrayl’ is great, ‘American Idle’ fantastic. The latter, with its stop-start guitar chugging and crew backing shouts really is a stand out. But then ‘Survive’ is an album of standouts – ‘What I Know’ has a fantastic opening guitar riff, while ‘Take What’s Yours’ has some of the best vocals in this genre of music. The chorus, like most of Much The Same‘s songs – is to die for. This band clearly don’t believe in anything but killer.
Cameron Webb’s slick production skills make ‘Survive’ sound beefy, rather than overly polished. There’s genuinely not a bad song here. Believe me, I’ve listened to some absolute guff in recent weeks and I’ve become a little grumpy in my reviews, so to find a gem as good as ‘Survive’ deserves all of the superlatives I can find. Fuck, listen to ‘Skeletons’ and ‘Living A Lie’ and I dare you to not play the air drums or bust some imaginary guitar licks in front of you mirror. This is a brilliant melodic punk rock release and definitely one of the best of the year.