I feel like I should enjoy ‘Heroes and Ghosts’ slightly more than I do. If you take the individual parts there are lots of boxes ticked. Soaring vocal melodies? Check. Big choruses? Check. 100mph machine gun drumming? Check. So why is that I feel Counterpunch slightly, every so slightly, let me down with this record? I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what I don’t like about this album, but the more I listen the more it frustrates me: in places this is absolutely brilliant, but in others it kind of drags a little bit and that’s half the problem.
Counterpunch sound a bit like The Swellers. It’s fast-paced melodic punk rock that hits hard but some pretty sweet melodies. When the band get it right they get it very right. The title track is brilliant and a great opening, while ‘We Believe’ is an absolute barnstormer and a contender for the record’s best track. There are a fair few tracks that stick out actually – ‘Strings of Destiny’ reminds me of No Use For A Name and ‘And Everybody’s Right (Asshole)’ has a great riff that has this little swagger to it, little bit slower, chugging away. Lovely.
So far, so good. The problem I have is that bands of this type struggle when they draw songs out and too many times the band seem to throw in an extra verse or something that drags it out and disrupts the overall flow. ‘Parasites’ is a minute too long, as is ‘March of th Paper Tiger’. It seems you get two great, fast flowing songs and then another stutters and breaks up the overall flow of the record. That’s my only complaint really, it just disrupted my enjoyment of the record as a whole. Take the songs individually and this scores at least half a star higher. Sadly my enjoyment doesn’t quite reach those standards taking this as an entire record. If you like The Swellers and EpiFat bands of the 90s, you will like this. Guaranteed.