Band: Fighting Fiction
Release Title: ‘The Long And Short Of It’ (Album)
Release Date: Out Now
‘Punk rock’ is a genre that does usually go one of two ways, the first being strong, powerful, simplistic and emotive bangers that stick in your head for days upon end and the second being flaccid, wet segments of cliche and bullshit. Let’s hope that Fighting Fiction can fuck the critics with ‘The Long And Short Of It‘.
‘Service Station Blues‘ kicks off proceedings in a pretty banal manner, the rhythm section in ‘The Getaway‘ is traditionally ‘pop punk’, the vocal style and subject matter are tedious and not particularly awe inspiring. ‘All In The Delivery‘ doesn’t offer any sort of escape from the flat vocals and dull rhythms.
‘A Common Enemy‘ has a pretty cool Bad Religion styled vibe which is a welcome change from its predecessors just hopefully they may have started off weakly to pick it up and change it up for the final half of the record. ‘Enabler‘ is an oddball stomper, ‘Smiling Through Gritted Teeth‘ is promising, dropped down and intriguing whilst the sweet acoustic behaviours of ‘Rebel Without A Cause‘ allow me to nod my head in time comfortably. Maybe a few too many wah-oh’s, though.
‘Casey Jones, Union Scab‘ is subtly dark, leading nicely into the title track ‘The Long And Short Of It‘, a track that does display that the band do have more than power-chords to go by, which is a bonus of sorts. The second half of the record has definitely picked up in more ways than one, it sounds a little darker in content, it’s diverse in style and not standard yawn-worthy pop-punk.
5/10
Reviewer: Luke Davis
