Review Summary: Puts up the brick.
Punk stalwarts Free Throw have released a bit of a dud. It’s not fair to say that there’s anything inherently wrong with
Moments Before the Wind, there’s just nothing inherently right either. When their debut
Those Days are Gone released in 2014, it was a young and messy band attracting young and messy fans, “Two Beers In” an anthem to a wide-related ethos of the time, relatable yet personal in the common denominator ways that makes pop-punk the unrelenting sound of youth. As Free Throw aged, so did their sound, evolving with real emotional maturity yet grounded in that same sense of community that they built with their early work. Even on 2023’s underappreciated
Lessons That We Swear to Keep, the vulnerability of the band’s center stayed true and pushed at the self-imposed boundaries of the sound, bringing an alternative and indie sound that hinted at a recreation of what Free Throw could truly be.
The issue with
Moments Before the Wind is actually a pretty simple one, it’s fairly boring. The songs blend together, the choruses refuse to hook, and the emotional outpours are predictable and flat. Cory Castro’s lyrics are fine, the same as they’ve always been, earnest and sincere, they just get lost in the pop-punk-emo muddle that Free Throw has regressed into. It’s one mid-tempo rocker after another. There are few highlights, “A Hero’s Grave” stealing heavily from contemporaries Hot Mulligan in style but offering a cathartic sing-a-long, while deep cut “Deviancy” offers some more aggressive and somber note with its pre-chorus shouts. Just frustratingly, even after multiple listens nothing else really sticks out. Second single “The Outlaw Star” is really the pinnacle of the sound Free Throw is going for here, and to borrow a bit from the lyrical refrain “I was afraid of repetition”, it would seem that’s exactly what we’ve gotten.
Moments Before the Wind won’t lose the group fans nor will it gain them any new ones, just frustrate those who were hoping for something a bit more engaging from a top name in the sound.
