Banger s and Mosh!
Following on from the last years album Small Pleasures, the Cornwall Punkers give us a nice little EP called Good Livin', which sees the band carry on from where they left off. The title track Good Livin' starts off with some big guitar riffs and banging drums before the gravely vocals of Roo Pescod kick in. The band are not to be confused with the light-hearted Pop/Punk, nor the "Oi, Oi, Oi!" gang participation of Street Punk, no, this is like Hard Rock with bigger balls, attitude and no ego or preconception about being bigger than the music. If you take a band like The Loved Ones and made them fight to the death with Lawrence Arms then added some Dear Landlord and a sprinkling of The Casualties, then you would have a blueprint of this band.
Next song is The Borrowers which is a slightly more frenzied tempo and with a little more chugging riffs between the odd melodies. The band have quite cunningly found the right tempo in their songs. If they were any slower then they could well fall into a harder-edged Pop/Punk, and in the same token if they were to go up a couple more notches in tempo then they would be flirting with Hardcore Punk – they are but somewhere in between, and that is just fine. The Mitigation Committee chugs along nicely with a sing-a-long chorus, before we have the final song, A Man Like Jack McCall which is actually a slower mid-tempo affair that has that DIY feel of integrity. This shows that each song doesn't have to be at breakneck speed to sound good.
Bangers are a band that you should take notice of. Punk Rock has gone a little quiet of late with bands either going to more traditional Punk rock, or Screamo, or as a mix of bland Pop/Punk and EMO which is in fact a watered down, radio-friendly morph of both genres. Bangers are original, and quite fittingly on the Jubilee weekend, come from good old Blightly. God Save The Queen...Great stuff.