Have you got gang shouts? Yes. Have you got breakdowns with a crunching guitar? Yes. Perfectly synced harmonies on every chorus? Yes. Woah-ohs? Yes. Right we’ve got a pop-punk album. In an increasingly saturated pop-punk scene you need something to stand out, someone to go against the grain and to their credit Augusta’s own VEARA do go some way to doing that. Unfortunately they have seemed to have followed a formula that seems to have become a pop-punk guide of how to make an easily accessible album.
‘We Have A Body Count’ is a very well polished with hints of the obligatory auto-tune (thank you ADTR’s Jeremy McKinnon), but behind the sleekness of the record’s production there is some genuinely good songwriting. Veara have a knack of writing some very big choruses displayed in ‘Pull Your Own Weight’ and ‘Better Off Without You’. The defining thing that Veara have going in their favour is their choice of song topics – aside from the obvious teenage angst and Blink 182-esque heartbreak tracks. They tend to focus on the ‘turmoil’ that the band has been through and that anger is tunnelled through songs like ‘Everything To Lose’ and album highlight ‘Only Famous People Get Famous’.
A mention does have to go to the excellent drum work of Brittany Harrell throughout the record especially in closing track ‘Getting Kicked In The Face Has Never Been So Fun‘. However, despite Veara‘s best efforts, the over-production of the record mean you could close your eyes and imagine this was any other pop-punk band.
TOM WALSH