Hello Monster

P.S. I'm Home

Written by: PP on 06/01/2014 23:30:55

So if the last couple of years in pop punk have been all about The Wonder Years and the resurgence of raw honesty, realistic lyrics, and a total overhaul of the style in general, you certainly can't tell that from the Hello Monster album "P.S. I'm Home". We're basically straight back at the source that generated the whole realist pop punk movement, roughly somewhere between Yellowcard, Amber Pacific, and Mayday Parade musically. In other words, overpolished pop punk where every edge has been ironed out by typically mainstream clean production that does the band no favours in terms of actually giving them an identity of any sort.

Where Yellowcard have their violin and Mayday Parade their youthful vibe, Hello Monster basically sound like a caricature of the genre, ticking off pretty much everything that was wrong with the genre circa 2008/2009 when the realist pop punk movement spawned in response to exactly this type of ultra poppy drivel. The super clean production leaves no glitches to the mix, but it also pushes the early Motion City Soundtrack style keyboards all the way to the back of the mix to the extent that they're barely even audible on for instance "Better Off Now", leaving the song to be another dime-a-dozen pop rock / pop punk medley instead. At the same time, the songwriting is shamelessly copying bigger bands as "Be Where You Want To Go" demonstrates by using essentially the same riff and dynamic as starts Yellowcard's classic "Ocean Avenue". Originality is literally thrown out the window, and so when the sappy and bland ballad "I. You. Me" arrives by track six, I'm all but ready to switch to something more exciting.

The thing is, while Hello Monster have written a few decent melodies and vocal harmonies on the record, their problem is that nothing, absolutely nothing sets them apart from pretty much every pop punk band ever to have released an album between 2005 and 2009 in the post NFG/Blink era. These songs have been written before so many times they now sound tired and cliché, as boring as they sound forgettable. Hence it is difficult to award a much higher rating for the album than this.

Download: Be Where You Want To Go, No One's Going Home Tonight
For the fans of: Yellowcard, Amber Pacific, Mayday Parade, Motion City Soundtrack
Listen: Facebook

Release date 17.05.2013
Self-Released

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