Crashed and burnt, Romeo?
Crash Romeo have gone out and bought the book of Pop/Punk read it from cover to cover and put it all into practise. I’m not suggesting that this is a bad thing, but the genre has grown to include hundreds of big bands, and with, ‘Give Me The Clap’ the influences read like an A-Z of the genre. That aside the songs are all well done, and in singer and guitarist Travis that have a guy with a fashionably popular voice that sounds as if it would be just as comfortable singing Emo as Pop/Punk.
Okay, so album opener, ‘About To Break’ starts with a high melodic guitar riff and pounding drums and there are strong influences of Simple Plan, Allister and Home Grown here for all to see. This leads along the same lines to the even better anthem, ‘Popular’ that has the big riff that goes into chugging guitars, and a simple drum beat whilst the harmonies drip in the background building up to a big sing-a-long chorus. This is classic Pop/Punk at it’s best mixing Simple Plan, Never Heard Of It and Punchline with the emphasis more on the Pop than the Punk.
The problem is that most of the songs are Pop/Punk by numbers without being original enough to be memorable. ‘Lady Luck’, and ‘Victim Liar’ follow along this same bouncy path, whilst ‘Maybe Lane’ sounds more like Plunket, and ‘Honest Eyes’ could well have been recorded by New Found Glory.
There are a handful of other songs that do shoot the band off slightly, like title song, ‘Gave Me The Clap’ that is slightly more Emo in the vein of Fall Out Boy meets Yellowcard and AFI, and ‘Set It Off’ which is a bit more like Relient K. However things fall strongly back in the ring of Pop/Punk with, ‘One Night Only’ that sounds like early Good Charlotte, and the album ballad, ‘Give Me Something’ which goes the whole nine yards with strings, piano and acoustic guitars!
The album finishes off with the slightly more complex, ‘Better Off In Jersey’ which again is slightly like Yellowcard, before the last bonus track of, ‘When all Else Fails’ keeps everything happy and jumpy with another Simple Plan-esque track.
I know that this all sounds rather negative, but in truth this is still a good album, it’s just a shame that it’s all been done before. They lack the hooks and harmonies of Simple Plan, the humour of Bowling For Soup, The Vandals and Blink 182, the punk tongue-in-cheek of The Offspring, and the lyrical depth of Green Day, meaning that they are just another Pop/Punk band, albeit from New Jersey!