ADOLESCENTS: MANIFEST DENSITY (2016)
1) Escape From Planet Fuck; 2)
Hey Captain Midnight; 3) Unhappy Hour; 4) Silver And Black; 5) Nightcrawler; 6)
Jacob's Ladder; 7) American Dogs In Europe; 8) Spring Break At Scar Beach; 9)
Catfish; 10) Lost On Hwy 39; 11) Bubblegum Manifesto; 12) Rat Catcher; 13) Vs.
Two things: (1) no, that is not a typo in the
album title, it's a brave, unrewarded swipe-in-the-dark at cleverness; (2)
ʽEscape From Planet Fuckʼ is a noble and understandable wish, but a fairly
crude song title that would have been more appropriate in 1980 than it is in
2016. Then again, it is perfectly
appropriate for a band that called itself The Adolescents in 1980 and made it a
major ideological point not to change
that name in 2016.
Other than that, I have to say that I find this
record even less deserving of a discussion than La Vendetta. More than ever now, it looks like Tony Reflex and his
friends have invented themselves a long-term ice bucket challenge — how long
will they be able to go on making hardcore records like this before they run
out of extra dole money? And the fact that the playing is as muscular, the
screaming as furious, and the lyrics as anti-establishment-vicious as ever, no
longer plays to their advantage, because every song sounds like it wants to
change the whole world, yet there is probably only a tiny smudgeon of people
who even know of its existence in the first place. And this time, there's not
even a single attempt at doing something out of the ordinary — song after song
after song, it is the same fast tempo, the same fuck-the-system scream, the
same anthemic refrain, the same generic melodic lead guitar, and the same 100%
lack of that hardcore magic that, thirty-six years ago, set them apart from the
pack.
Really, it's so humiliating, they even have
their Manifest Density page on
Wikipedia marked for potential deletion because of «lack of notability» — what
a frickin' shame for a band writing songs like ʽAmerican Dogs In Europeʼ. But
honestly, enough with these ever-deteriorating clones of The Fastest Kid Alive already! And see, this is why, when all other
parameters are levelled out, good old hard rock like AC/DC wins over punk rock
— at least the Young brothers, even in their least inspired days, still tried
to come up with a slightly different riff for every song; on this record, I struggle to find even one
half-decent guitar melody. Thumbs down.
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