Most of the time, when a band posts a ‘New track for download!’ thread in the Punktastic forums, the quality of the music leaves a lot to be desired. Which is why I was very pleasantly surprised when I listened to a track by a little known band by the name of 4th Flaw.
‘Alex Kidd’ was that song and it also happens to be the first track on this 3 song demo. Starting off with a Thrice-lite guitar riff which immediately demands your attention, the song just oozes with melody, musicianship and some of those little guitar flourishes that discern an ok band from a really good one. A tale of wasted youth, it is easily the best song on here and one of the best songs from an unknown UK band I’ve heard in ages. Imagine old-school Unwritten Law jamming with Thrice and Over It and you’re sort of halfway there.
I don’t usually like song by song reviews, but as there’s only 3 of the buggers, I might as well buck the trend and move onto ‘Pandora’. A close cousin of opener ‘Alex Kidd’, it starts with an atmospheric and scene setting breakdown before descending into a mid pace technical punk meltdown that, yet again, is reminiscent of an English version of Thrice, but poppier.
To top it all off, ‘A Song For A Friend’ comes over all acoustic and, thanks in part to the excellent vocals, the highly impressive musicianship (violins and everything) and the fantastic recording quality, manages to stray away from the usual clichéd nature of this sort of thing by a whisker and top things off nicely.
Granted, I would have preferred more songs, and on a 3 song sampler, an acoustic track is probably not the best choice, but it works and that is a credit to the band. While they are hardly playing anything new or original, the technical yet poppy punk rock on display here is played to a ridiculously high standard. Check them out if they every stray through your town.
Ross