:( (Colon Open Bracket) - First Blood Album Review

:( (Colon Open Bracket)
First Blood
Album Review

Following the likes of Enter Shikari out of the bedroom post hardcore scene come Aberdeen four-piece : ( (pronounced colonopenbracket). Thing is, where as the aforementioned bunch sound like a low-budget Lostprophets, this lot are like the mangled corpse of Bis being thrown to the lions - or in this case My Chemical Romance - and made to feed off the morsels of guitar lineage and over-exuberant, not to mention self-effacing scraps of lyrics, in turn creating their own mini-genre - electremo!

Yep, you read it here first folks. This lot really do make hardcore sounds played through a Gameboy, or if they're feeling really adventurous, a handheld Casio keyboard. OK, so maybe I'm being a little patronising to the colon. bunch, as 'First Blood' is a good kick up the arse - or should that be shot in the arm? - to a genre that seems to have grown staid whilst looking across the Atlantic for inspiration instead of making the best of what homegrown skills they've got - something which : ( do with grace.

They also have an array of splendid song titles, such as 'Heartache Of Soccer Moms' and 'Hunt Hunters', which sound like the sort of thing even Morrissey would have been proud of once upon a time.

In fact, if they could just add a tad more variation in the structure and sound of each song, the door to success may evolve into a chasm rapidly. As it is at the moment though, every song is indistinguishable from the next, so justice hasn't really been done up to now. Still, it's early days, so probably best to judge them in 6 months time, and you never know, they may even have upgraded to Xbox by then.

3/5

Dom Gourlay