Artist: The Uprising
Album: Appetite For Deception
Label: Long Live Crime Records
The Uprising plays a classic style of OC punk-rock that thankfully never seems to fall out of favour. Sure, fewer and fewer bands play classic OC punk these days, and the days of Bad Religion, 90's The Offspring, and Pennywise hits dominating the airwaves have come and gone, but if you dig deep enough you can still find new revivalists like The Uprising keeping this niche's fans occupied.
The Uprising plays a distinct brand of punk-rock that shifts between sounding like an edgier brand of Pennywise, and a more aggressive version of Bad Religion. Like the aforementioned bands, The Uprising subscribes to a melodic punk-rock legacy. Insanely fast drumming speeds along behind a foreground of slightly slower guitars, and is all guided by lead vocalist "Crabby's" smoothly melodic voice. In tracks like "I Wanna Know," silky smooth Bad Religion-esque backing vocals (read: "whoas") add another layer of polish to the band's sound. However, the band doesn't "overuse" their backing vocalists, a key distinction that prevents them from sounding too close to Bad Religion. Seeing how Bad Religion guitarist Greg Heston helped oversee the album, such an influence seems natural. Rounding out this polish comes rougher tracks that borrow from earlier Pennywise material. Tracks like "Signs" have a distinct tempo change between the chorus and body of the song, producing a disjointed feeling that keeps the material sounding "rough." "We Don't Belong" actually features vocals from Pennywise frontman Jim Lingberg which, again, makes the apparentness of the influence appropriate.
Lyrically, the band heavily aligns itself with Pennywise, passionately and angrily preaching about social issues and a time for change - themes more than apparent in the album's artwork of a bloody stained White House. Based on Crabby's experiences detailed on the band's website, I imagine the lyrics are sung with as much sincerity as their strong delivery suggests. Near fatally injured by a terrorist bomb in Indonesia in 2002, Crabby had to draw upon the punkrock community to pay his medical and rehabilitation expenses when he arrived back home. Bitterness would be an understatement.
I've thrown around Pennywise and Bad Religion in this review more than I'm comfortable with. I don't want anyone thinking that I find this album favourable simply because of familiarity. I've heard a lot of boring OC punk-rock clones that stray far too close to their parent material - The Generators instantly come to mind - but that's not the case with The Uprising. The key difference, passion, isn't exactly quantifiable, but is certainly instantly apparent. Simply put, The Uprising's strong debut places the band into the same camp as the genre leaders, preventing Appetite For Deception from falling in with legions of "paint by numbers" OC punkrock clones.
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