Review Summary: All gas no brakes
Full video review - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYLVqWYDHM4
Melodic hardcore underground heroes A Wilhelm Scream built a diehard following a run of insanely tight, technical, and beloved records, especially
Ruiner and
Career Suicide back in the mid 2000s. They’ve always been praised for their dizzying riff-work, shred-heavy arrangements, mile-a-minute tempos, and lyrics that bounce between sincerity and tongue-in-cheek attitude. With
Cheap Heat, the band return once again with their brand of hardcore punk energy, pop punk hooks, and technical noodling.
The headline here is: they're still playing stupidly fast. Like it’s pedal to the metal for basically all 30 minutes of this thing. From the second the opener
“Somebodies Gonna Die” explodes out of your speakers, the band makes it known: Cheap Heat is going to be a full-throttle sprint. I really like how prominent the bass is here in the opener too, and through a lot of the record.
“The Scumbag Grift” follows this up for a killer one-two punch opening combo. There are points on this track where it feels like someone hit the x2 speed button its racing along as such a breakneck pace. It’s some badass *** that just gets the blood pumping.
“Midnight Ghost” was probably my favorite of the singles and delivers maybe the catchiest hooks on the record. The lead guitar melody here is super infectious, and the chorus is an undeniable ear-worm, maybe the most outright melodic the band has sounded in a minute.
“Let It Ride” continues the breakneck pacing, at time it feels like the vocals and guitars are racing each other to see who can finish the song first, both trying to keep up and overtake each other. Then you have the other single,
“Tunnel Vision", which adds these sweet vocal harmonies that fit its lovey-dovey lyrical theme. It’s a bit more of a love song, which isn’t really what I’m coming to A Wilhelm Scream for, but its good for what it is, and the band deliver another infectious hook on the chorus.
Across the album the guitar work is ridiculously badass. Some of the most precise and riff heavy punk you will hear all year no doubt. The shredding on this goes harder than most of the thrash albums I’ve reviewed this year.
I guess the biggest knock here is that it is all fairly one note, like every track is the same full throttle formula. The only real breaks away from this are the intro into
"Fell Off", which actually has some pretty cool interplay between the fast lead lines and more measured rhythm guitar riffs before dropping back into shred city, and the closing track
"Poison II" which is a bit more mid tempo. And on the same note, while the drumming is very tight, explosive, and constantly firing on all cylinders, it is basically d-beat all the way. Like D-Beat as far as the eyes can see, and a bit more variety here would have gone a way to distinguishing some of the tracks from each other more.
So as I say this is pretty one note, but if you’re here for that one thing it does, you’re in for a blast. And if you’re not, then see you later. The band clearly don’t take themselves too seriously – I mean look at the buttrock ass, Myspace era album art. Like, it is ultimately dumb but fun skate punk, but executed with enough speed, energy, passionate vocals, technical shredding and hooks to elevate it to something more memorable and much more exciting.
