Honor Bright

Action! Drama! Suspense!

Written by: PP on 21/09/2010 05:48:45

Honor Bright are a fairly typical pop punk band from Syracuse, New York, in that they sound like most other polished college/high school pop punks tend to do across the US these days. Bands that should immediately connect the imaginary dots in your mind while listening to their sophomore album "Action! Drama! Suspense!" include Hit The Lights, The Maine, All Time Low, Mayday Parade, Cartel etc etc..you get the point. But what they lack for in originality, they compensate with a decent amount of energy and a healthy enthusiasm for straight forward, by the books pop punk that manifests itself in easily enjoyable and -accessible songs sung with passion and dedication, no matter how much of a cheese fest the starting point may well be. The reason why it works as opposed to so many other identikit bands (or, say, the newer stuff by Cartel for instance) is that the record doesn't try to be at all more ambitious than it needs to be. It's perfectly content staying at a simple, likable pop punk level, realizing that not every artist of this kind needs to conquer an arena or needlessly to dramatize their sound to make an impact on the music scene.

So really, the short version of this review could be written as: "Action! Drama! Suspense!" is a hook driven, fun pop punk record with songs about girls. There are no surprises to be discovered, no quirky moments nor even massive megahits All Time Low style. The songs are predictable but not annoyingly so, probably a result of the band itself being aware of the fact and thus attempting to make the most out of the situation nonetheless. The end result is a eleven tracks of reasonably high standard but ones which don't reach for the stars or appear on any best of 2010 lists come December. That's enough for most people to get a kick out of listening to a track like "How To Break A Heart", that sums up the record well with its opening line of "I think you were expecting a love song, something sweet", but it'd still be unfair to solid bands like Hit The Lights or All Time Low to rate Honor Bright on par alongside them. This is because while there aren't any decidedly awful tracks on the release, or even purely average ones really, there aren't really any big hits either that'll reel in the larger crowds. Get this if you're into summer pop punk, or just want to hear something summery as we're quickly approaching the miserable Danish fall each day that passes.

Download: How To Break The Heart, Paper Thin Walls
For the fans of: Valencia, Hit The Lights, Cartel, The Maine
Listen: Myspace

Release date 20.07.2010
Triple Crown Records

Related Items | How we score?
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.