Review Summary: fuck you
No Trend hated you, me, and everyone else in the world. They couldn’t care less who you are, what you do, or what you identify as. You were nothing more than dirt to them. To put it short, No Trend were probably the angriest band of all time.
Their debut extended play
Teen Love acts as a blueprint of sorts for their full-length follow-up
Too Many Humans, most of the songs revolve around the bass, while the guitars simply shriek and hiss in a hideous manner. Vocalist Jeff Mentges is definitely a contender for having the ugliest voice ever; his voice absolutely reeks of pure disgust. However, if you thought the instrumentation was nasty, then you really need to check the lyrics.
From the frantic howls on “Mass Sterilization…” to the cold, robotic delivery on the title track, themes of death and destruction are not foreign topics on the record. The lyrics
“Beneath the surface is decay / The eyes are windows to the soul” perhaps sums up the record’s overall tone the best.
The best track, however, the title track. Without a doubt, this is one of the most bitter songs the band has ever recorded. It’s essentially a mockery of love songs, and boy, is it upsetting. The track is about a young couple, how they met, how they interacted, and so on. However, Mentges describes the story in a very lifeless and mechanical tone. The way he describes the teen’s interactions make them sound like robots rather than actual human beings, as evident by lyrics such as
“He rearranged his facial features to appear more friendly”. By the end of the song, it is revealed that the couple died in a drunken car crash, and that they “never fulfilled their career dreams”.
There are a few downsides to this record, sadly. For one, the drums are simply uninteresting and bland, they never stand out. There is also the inclusions of two mediocre tracks: the funny-but-otherwise-useless “Let’s Go Crazy”, and the laughably bad “Die”, which contains the lyrics “Stop living!” and “Become dead!”
In all honesty, No Trend never made that big of an impact on any music scene or genre, hell, they’re not even a relevant band. They were simply just a group of furious kids who wanted to do things differently, and
Teen Love shows just how much could be done when you’re angry.
