Yell Out in Defiance

Pennywise has been making pure punk music for over a decade even as the pseudo-punk bands of today like Good Charlotte and band of their ilk have watered down the genre lately. Even Pennywise’s contemporary in the so-cal scene, The Offspring, has moved in a more pop direction lately. But Pennywise has shown on their latest album, The Fuse, they have no signs of softening up anytime soon.

On the album, which is still being released by the legendary Epitaph label, the guitars are still loud, the drums are fast, and the boys are still angry. So any old fan or true punk fan will enjoy this album. And being their first album since the election, songs about the state of the world since take precedent. On Dying, “Polarized lies of the fascist sleaze, Lining up the shadowed gaze, Beheaded for a shallow grave, Whoring in complacency.” Then on 18 Soldier, the band takes a look at the loss of war, “18 fathers visit the graves, Locked in violence resigned to their fate, Fallen Idols are cracked at the base, Hollow silence alone in their place, Retaliation is blind, With underestimated losses of life”

The media also gets their knocks on the album. The band could do without the media as a whole during Disconnect, “Just too much information, Electronic Stimulation, All this media saturation, Just gives me more aggravation.” They also focus in on Fox New with the aptly titled Fox TV, “Make way for the next sensation, Factual Manipulation, Stay tuned for the next creation, Department of misinformation.” But then again, who isn’t getting tired of the 24 hour news stations who spend more time making news than reporting it.

The biggest problem with the album is that, even at 42 minutes, the album seems to wear on to long. Towards the end, it gets really hard to distinguish one song from another. They could have trimmed the album down a little to give the listeners a better ability to digest the songs properly.

Song to Download – Fox TV

The Fuse gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.