After a messy intro, Bazooka Joe crash straight in with there no-nonsense brand of Pop Punk. The booming drums and messy distorted guitars hold first track ‘I Know’ together well and with a dirty growl, it mixes a Foo Fighters style of melodic grunge with a more NOFX guitar riff, which is both fast, furious and catchy. It is fairly predictable but is a very catchy start to the offering and with big and fast hook lines and some nice punktastic break downs it moves well and has some good dynamic. A very good three and a half minute blast of catchy punk. Then comes one of the greatest first lines to a song ever….”I’m sick of all this bitchin, Britney Spears needs fisting, Simon Cowell should sort it out”, The apt title of the second track is ‘Lame Academy’ and this sees Bazooka Joe in more tradional 90’s Americana punk territory. The fast riffs, funny yet purposeful lyrics and with the hilarious middle eight that mixes the riff from ‘I Will Survive’ with comedy lyrics about the main stream ‘pop’ charts, this is a song that NOFX or MXPX would be proud of. Final track ‘Prince Charles’ is again a fast, banging and catchy 3 minutes of punk. The dynamics are good again in this song and the lyrics are once again ones to make you smile. With the cool ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ reggae ska break down that is very welcome, they show that there is some nice moments of diversity to their sound. This is fun, catchy and witty punk, nothing mind-blowing, nothing overly new but still loads of fun and very well written and performed. In my book anyone who can get the line “Will Young you corporate whore, don’t look around now, cause your not welcome anymore, as for Justin Timberlake you can suck my trouser snake, your gonna die, your gonna die!” can’t be bad!
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