Album Rating: 3.5

Don't buy this album, even The Kidcrash doesn't want you to. The production company screwed them over on this album so now they're are encouraging you to download it free from their site (http://www.denovali.com/kidcrash/). This album is nowhere near as good as "Jokes" but it's still worth the download, best totally free album I've ever got (legally).

this record has a lot of issues that are the result of the recording and production process.

we recorded this with producer ed rose (get up kids, appleseed cast, casket lottery). we paid out of our pocket to spend 10 days at black lodge in eudora, ks. all of our experiences over the four years leading up to new ruins were very laid back in comparison. we were 17/18/19 at the time and we weren't really prepared for what was expected of us by ed. i had never recorded to a click track, and it took me the first of 3 10-hour days do start to get a little bit comfortable. ed took the demos home the night before we started so he could listen to them and bring us back a copy with some changes and some suggestions. we were really bummed out to find that some of the parts we really liked had been cut out of the version he gave us. we ended up accepting letting go of the parts, but it was unexpected. he then told us that there was going to be an issue with how every song fluctuated in tempo at a range around 90-120bpm and that the tempo changed from part to part: it would have been a nightmare to program the click to like 10 different tempos in each song, tempos that we didn't have any real idea of in the first place, and to punch in each part, there was no way. one tempo, maybe 2 per song if it was really neccessary...

i recorded the drums at one tempo per song. i had to learn to play all of the parts we had been practicing at dramatically different tempos, while adjusting to a click track. any sense of mathyness, which the demos really did convey, was sucked out. ed was really demanding that my stroke be even, in the same spot, and dead on time, absolutely precise. i simply couldnt do it. we had a lot of respect for ed going into it, and having him get really worked up out of frustration for wasting so much time on really amateur 1000 take kind of mistakes, it was so nerve racking and terrifying. the pressure, mixed with all the new things being thrown at me all of the sudden didn't make it any easier. i had to record each 15-30 seconds, and then keep punching in the next part until I would finally hit it; it went that way for 30 hours, and after that, we still spent more than half of the one day we had to mix the record dealing with the drums.

there was one point where i tried about 50 times to just punch in this one kick slide, just a fast duh-duh, and my foot could not do it. i had to just be like, just paste that note in their, this is insane, i cant even play the most basic of shit anymore today. it was never hard to record with a click track after that, but we never used one again after the ep that followed new ruins. new ruins is a lego record. its interesting how together it sounds considering how glued together it was. alex had a similar experience recording vocals. we had to spend a bunch of time we were supposed to be mixing on drums and vocal. it was the first time he had pushed his voice so hard and been under such scrutiny. a lot of notes were out of tune and he had to sing them over and over and over just to get one take. it wasnt clear if the vocals were autotuned how seriously they were effected, but its pretty clear that they were, but we didnt talk about or know about it really until we listened to it the night we got out and drove back. like, i got the impression that ed was having to cheat in places just to get the record done. we spent $10k to be there for 10 days and he knew we didnt have a label to help us pay for the extra day or two that we really needed, so he did what he had to make sure we had a record in hand when we left; it just came at the price of authenticity knowing that there is an unknown but undeniable amount of drum doctoring and vocal edits.

don't get me wrong, nothing 1/100th of the average pop-punk-emo record, but we never expected to ever have anything to do with such fake shit, and even just a little bit, that isn't acceptable to us as musicians and its never been. if we had talked about it, we never would have been okay with that kind of edit, but we were too stressed out to even deal with it and just trusted ed. in the end, its a great record for what it is, which is about 1000x different than what we had gone there expecting. the album grew on us, grew off us, and i think we are all at the point where we appreciate it. just not in the way we appreciate music that we take seriously.

Why do you type so much, take it easy.

Ya that sucks man. I don't like click tracks all that much either. I had to learn that the first time I really recorded material in Pro Tools and I essentially got owned for 3 weeks.

Album Rating: 3.0

I find it very repetitive but still a good listen.

Album Rating: 3.5

This sounds more like Pop-punky Cap'n Jazz more than anything.

Album Rating: 3.5

wow, the band's actual post here was really interesting



did not expect this to sound like it did from working backward from their discog, but this is still great

kidcrash have done no wrong so far

Album Rating: 3.5

love this band

Album Rating: 3.5

i thought i was being punked when i first listened to it. I didnt believe it was actually kidcrash

Album Rating: 4.0

guitar lines are killer

Album Rating: 4.0

This is a really fun listen for me. Something about it makes it feel really unique.



It's a really different sound than the Kidcrash I first listened to, but it's still seems very well done.

Album Rating: 3.5

yeah this is good. i understand that this isnt what they went into the studio expecting, but fuck it i still enjoy it

THIS IS WHAT IT FEEEELLLLSSS LIKE TO REEEMMMEEEMMMBBEEEEEEERRRRRR

Album Rating: 3.5

Wow I was kinda surprised how incredibly different the vox on this are compared to Jokes, still rules tho so it's k

Totally different from everything else they've ever done but for some reason I really enjoy and keep playing it over.

Album Rating: 4.0

yea

afterburn of being born is where it's at on this