Punishment

Broken But Not Dead (2003)

Jim

Meh.

I just got done watching my beloved Penguins come back from a 3-0 deficit to tie the Flyers, so I guess it's only fitting to talk about another group from Philly who fall short of the mark. Punishment is your basic metal-tinged quasi-tough guy hardcore band. You know the drill: growled vocals, plenty of chugga chugga, some double bass kicks, etc. They don't really do anything to set them apart from a hundred other bands doing the same thing. Not that a band has to be groundbreaking or totally original to be good, but they at least need to be interesting or dynamic, and Punishment is neither.

The songs on "Broken But Not Dead" just seem to run together, like one big song with a lot of breakdowns. I'll often listen to CDs when I'm laying in bed at night so I can hear them without being distracted by other things, it's not abnormal for me to fall asleep every now and then, but this time I couldn't make it past the third track. I must've listen this a half dozen times, just trying to pick out some points of interest, but it never happened. I'm not saying I hate this CD, and I don't want to seem like I'm simply intent on bashing this band into oblivion, but this album did nothing for me

Back in the mid-nineties, in what I would call the heyday of tough guy hardcore, you could hear a ton of bands who sounded just like this. The problem is, it's not the mid-nineties anymore, and Punishment sound anything but fresh. Still, this band is relatively new and they should have plenty of time to expand upon their sound.