DISCLAIMER: There are occasional cases where I have a difficult time describing the music contained with an album, but the music contained within is so inherently bad that I don't even put effort into a description. Bear with me. Remember when pop-punk bands just about everyone on punknews hates used to play really mediocre punk rock? No? Oh, well in that case, let me give you some quick examples. When Yellowcard had their old vocalist, they came out with two full-lengths that both sounded like a third-rate Bigwig with violins. Mest, on their little known Mo Money, Mo 40z, played a sped-up, more raw version of their current style, albeit still poppy in places. Johnny Rev sounds exactly like they're in this "first stage" of their career. Very underdeveloped, but still very crappy. And yes, I'm well aware I've already used the "early in a pop-punk band's career" comparison. I'm never going to figure out how they got Matt Allison (Alkaline Trio, Duvall, The Lawrence Arms) to produce this. In the liner notes, apparently the twenty-second long "30" has "lyrics too juvenile to print," but the very next track, "Fault Line," goes "fucked up, too much, I'm getting sick of this life, no lie. Everything goes downhill, and everything is wrong when it comes to you and everything is fucked. What can I say?" Fine pieces of delicate, printable genius if I do say so myself. They sort of flop between a slightly harder version of pop-punk and pseudo-punk rock, with some obnoxious-sounding vocal work. But this EP is seriously so boring and plain in an indescribable way that if I were typing up a description on the spot, you'd need fucking PacMan to eat up the trails of ellipses I'd be leaving. MP3 CLIP
Shallows