Whole Wheat Bread

Punk Life (2006)

Smelton

With the consistent touring that Whole Wheat Bread does, it's hard to believe they had time to make this EP. This is the followup to their debut album, Minority Rules, and isn't what one expects.

The EP starts out with probably its best song, "206." The song has a blazing guitar provided by Aaron Abraham, and a video is planned for it soon. Up next is another great song, "Grass." Sure, it's just about smoking weed, but then again, the man who sings it, Nick Largen, AKA DJ Dirty $keet, is now in jail. It's catchy, but not as catchy as "206."

Now here's where things go downhill. "Symbol of Hope" is a good song, but it says the same thing that a lot of Whole Wheat Bread's other songs say: We're black. It's okay to hear it every once in a while, but hearing it one too many times is annoying. "No Problem" is what you'll also hear at a Whole Wheat Bread concert: There will be chants of the band saying "WHOLE WHEAT--!" and the crowd shouting "--BREAD!." And then we finally get to "I Don't Give a Fuck"; the song is just them talking about how they're tough, and again, they mention their skin color.

Luckily, the EP ends with "Never Scared." This is a Bonecrusher cover and sounds great. Its lyrics are ones that you'll be singing for days, and they play it great live.

Overall, I would've waited for a brand new full-length over this. The production on it is great, but the three songs I mentioned above just don't get things going. Being that they have a new bass player in CJ, I hope that he can get things back together for a new album. Am I saying that the EP is terrible? No. All I'm saying is that when you go back and listen to a song like "Old Man Samson" off the debut album, you can't help but think "What happened?"