All bands, labels, and promotional companies lie in press sheets. It's inevitable. They all have to make their product sound like the single best record to come out in the year, that's fine, I understand that. But making ridiculous, outlandish claims that couldn't be further from the truth are going to make me hate the band before even ever hearing the entire record.
I did give Dead Letter Dept.'s Rock N' Roll Hates You an entirely fair shake, and nowhere in the record were "anthems dedicated to those who have given into the consumerist ideal of society." You don't have to be Bad Religion or Propagandhi to make an informed, intelligent statement with your music, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that "She haunts my dreams my dreams, makes her happy / She sucks my blood makes her happy, is this lust? / I don't want to wake up" doesn't quite qualify as informed social commentary. What it qualifies as is vapid nonsense about trivial failed relationships. Three cheers for being unique.
Lyrics aren't everything, though. No, the band actually impresses in plenty of other areas as well!
Okay, so that was a lie. The truth of the matter is that they sound like plenty of other bands out there right now. "Punk" at the core, with some whiny out of tune vocals that reek of bad high school relationships and being pissed off because they were out of tater tots in the lunch line. The chord progressions are pretty rudimentary, save for a little bit of the underlying melodic riffing; at least they attempted a degree of diversity in their sound. Only on "Sailor / Mudboy Opus" do they really branch out, basing the song off some real `50s rock ân' roll-like guitar work that's surprisingly refreshing. Sounds a bit like Chubby Checker's "The Twist," which is something more bands should base their music on to be quite honest.
The majority of it however is still just boring emo/punk fodder. Another one bites the dust. So true, Mr. Mercury, so true.