Review Summary: High blow! High blow! High blow! High blow! He's down for the count! 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9...
Dillinger Four is one of those bands that you latch onto and don’t let go of. Sure, they weren’t around during the said ‘glory days’ of late seventies, early eighties punk rock, but they carry themselves with that same swagger that lacks so much… okay, that’s completely gone in today’s modern punk scene; with exceptions given, of course. But they aren’t a bunch of rookie punks who come in screaming red hot and burn out faster then the Hindenburg, by the time the new millennium rolled around they had already been a band for nearly half a decade. To be honest, by the time Versus God had rolled around Dillinger Four had already released a compilation album of earlier recorded material.
Versus God is a must-have for any punk, hardcore or pop-punk fan. It embodies the pissed off ‘anti-establishment’ rules set out by punk, the DIY dark undertones that followed early eighties hardcore, and yet is infectiously groovy and easily accessible for those of the pop-punk genre. It is an extremely angry record (“When the house of cares you built has finally toppled in decline I hope the punishment and pain will last a lifetime,” taken from Maximum Piss and Vinegar), this is something that plays along ironically well with the basic four chord progression that Dillinger Four adopts on nearly every single one of their songs. These guys don’t go amazing feats of technical skills that bands like Propagandhi or A Wilhelm Scream have found their niche in. Following the same ethos of early punk/hardcore, Dillinger Four keeps the songs stylistically simple, just cranked up to eleven… Versus God is also (obviously) a very big middle finger to organized religion as songs such as ‘Last Communion’ and ‘Music Is None of My Business’ all take shots at God and His followers.
Dillinger Four are one of those bands that are on a mission, yet aren’t trying to save the whole world. They have a message, one very pissed off, angry one, but at the end of the day they are down to just jam and have fun. Versus God is that kind of album. Dark, bleak, raw and extremely aggressive, yet catchy enough to keep you banging your head to the beat for the entire thirty-five plus minutes that the album runs on. These guys are a band could have possibly sold out like Blink-182 or even Sum 41, but they kept to their punk rock ethos and while it is a crying shame that they might not have ever gotten the exposure that Dillinger Four deserves, Versus God is an album that any lover of pop-punk and punk/hardcore should treasure and keep. Get this album now, you will not regret it.
