Mighty Midgets play a harried style that sort of throws together fast melodic punk, hardcore and skatepunk. Have you heard it before? Sure. Is it worth hearing again? Absolutely. Is MM a band actually making hearing it again worthwhile? Eh.

While they don't have near the technicality, Raising Ruins for the Future definitely has the urgency of a Bigwig or, especially, an A Wilhelm Scream. But the band can riff all right once in a while, as both the title track and closer "Fuck the System Etc." will attest to. The former also has a more restrained, lone slow strum to open and close it à la Lipona's "Beginning of the Dynamite Era" or AWS's "The King Is Dead" (and heck, I think the band nicks the opening riff of "Me vs. Morrissey..." for "Time Well Wasted"). It's a rare glimpse of ambition--"Fuck the System Etc." has an acoustic backbone and more deliberate opening, too--that gives the album a little more unique character, but when the band go the opposite route, like with the '80s hardcore-ish "Freezing Factory Floors" and "As Seen on TV," that helps too.

Still, one can't help but feel like Future blows by too indistinctly. There's largely two modes here: fast, and faster. While that worked wonders for Career Suicide, the hooks here are forgettable--or are altogether void--and the exigency just isn't as palpable. "Greed Energy" makes the best case for its possibility, though it's too little too late. I know we're holding them to high standards here, but the band just can't seem to fully reel the listener in at all for most of this full-length.

But they sound sincere enough and like they're having plenty of fun. That much credit has to be given, but it isn't enough to make Raising Ruins for the Future more than disappointingly middling.

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Thoughts on Article 19
You Are Not Alone (The World Is Full of Assholes)
Ruins for the Future