Four Year Strong – ‘Four Year Strong’

When Boston’s Four Year Strong released their 2007 breakthrough album ‘Rise Or Die Trying’, they couldn’t have had any idea just how prescient that title would turn out to be. To describe the band’s fortunes over the past 8 years as ‘a mixed bag’ would be an understatement on a par with

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LIVE: Hit the Deck Festival 2015

Here at Punktastic there’s little we look forward to more than festival season; that annual jamboree of warm beer, ruined shoes and the Herculean task of attempting to wrestle a pop-up tent back into the tiny disc from which it came. It’s alway nice, however, to ease into

Kilkovec – ‘Sick of This’

Hampshire’s Kilkovec have a branding problem. First they lure us into a false sense of moody security with ‘I Know I Don’t’, the opener of second EP ‘Sick of This’, coming on like Alkaline Trio having an existential crisis-induced gothic strop; the song’s upbeat, gruff-punk verses distinctly at odds with the

We Are Harlot – ‘We Are Harlot’

‘Meet your new favourite band!!’ So begins the press release accompanying the début album from hair-metal revivalists, sorry, ‘Transcontinental rockers’ We Are Harlot.You can tell they’re transcontinental because the word ‘transcontinental’ is mentioned twice in as many sentences. In fact, so preoccupied is said press release with the nationalities of the

Seasons Change – ‘Please Don’t Leave’

The last couple of years have proven to be a great time to be into pop-punk; if you can put aside the laughable hand-wringing from earnest dudes in checked shirts about what does and doesn’t constitute the genre’s values and attitudes (come on guys – we’re talking about four chords and songs about

Death Cab for Cutie – ‘Kintsugi’

Kintsugi. One word, but a whole world of ammunition for music writers the world over. Referring as it does to the Japanese art of ‘golden joinery’ – repairing broken pottery using precious metals – we can’t help but see the title of Death Cab for Cutie’s eighth studio

Darwin & The Dinosaur – ‘A Thousand Ships’

We’re always wary when bands cite deliberately dissonant influences; obviously it’s impossible to be objective about your own sound but at the same time we can’t help but see it as an attempt to simultaneously demonstrate diverse musical predilection and place your band in the ‘eclectic/undefinable’ category. So when ‘A

Fat Mike & Friends – ‘Home Street Home’ OST

What if the award-winning, hilariously lewd musical ‘Avenue Q’ had been written by NOFX? Probably not a question that’s ever been asked by anyone, but one that’s nonetheless been answered by the forthcoming production ‘Home Street Home’. The result of a collaboration between NOFX’s Fat Mike, Jeff Marx (a lyricist and composer

Big Fin – ‘Ebb & Flow’

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a rock musician in possession of a great singing voice, must be in want of an acoustic solo career. Whether it’s the toll of touring, the psychic drain of creativity-by-committee or good old fashioned ‘maturity’, the acoustic rebirth is a phenomenon which seems to have