Chicago is known for many things. Pop bands might be somewhere on that list, depending on who you ask, but not pop like this. Victorian Halls bring a healthy dose of pop sensibility with grand pianos, acrobatic vocals and hard working drums in SpringTeen, a seven-track disc that proves to be a solid effort despite a few moments of self-recycling.
The first, and biggest, influence you’ll heard scattered about this record is The Blood Brothers, and rightfully so. Whether it’s the Johnny Whitney-esqe wailing vocals or the flawlessly injected piano lines, the similarity is hard to deny, barring you keep in mind that SpringTeen is more in the vein of Crimes and Young Machetes than anything else out of the now defunct band’s catalogue. Victorian Halls bring various piano thematics to the table, ranging from simple melodies (“Persecution of Bellissima Morte”) to haunting chords (“Go! Razorbacks! Go!”) that often push the music into grandiose sounding directions. The only problem with the piano is that after awhile, the piano starts to get somewhat predictable – like you’re expecting them to throw a piano part in soon.
The jagged vocals only streamline the band’s ability to flex its pop muscle, bouncing words with a mix of shrieks, wails and high-pitched melodies. Urgent and powering, the vocals only add to the catchiness of songs like “Pop, Pop, Pop” and “Go! Razorbacks! Go!”. When the screams let down, the spoken and sung parts have enough heart to keep the listener drawn in, but not enough to match the punch that the normal vocals provide these tracks. If anything will draw you into this record, it will certainly be the vocals. The crooning of the line ‘We are the party killers’ in “Go! Razorbacks! Go!” oozes with singalong appeal. Combine that with a seesaw battle of drums and guitars and a pounding piano, and you’ll see what this band is capable of doing when they are on the top of their game throughout this particular track.
But if you’re going to take the route of Victorian Halls, you’re going to have to sell it with every ounce. Though they pull the ‘play the piano and scream’ formula into every track, it isn’t a foolproof one. “It’s a Ghost Town, Alleiluuya” relies heavily on the vocals and piano to carry the tune, occasionally throwing in Queen flashback moments to break it all up. Unfortunately, this track just sounds out of place and can’t keep up with anything else the band offers on SpringTeen. Besides the track being about five minutes long, many of its sections seem half-hearted, with the piano seeming recycled during several parts of the track. With a reasonable amount of hooking ability and a sound reminiscent of a group most people are sad to see go, it is only a matter of time before Victorian Halls picks up some steam. The only question is, will they be ready?
[by: Jason Gardner]
Rating: 3/5
Release Date: October, 2007
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Things have changed in the five years since Shai Hulud released That Within Blood Ill-Tempered. Shai Hulud lost another vocalist, thought about changing their name and brought in an old drummer to man the skins. One thing that hasn’t changed though is the band’s long-standing message of misanthropy, and that message is as ripe as ever in the aptly named Misanthropy Pure, Shai Hulud’s debut recording for Metal Blade Records. 
With their second full-length, and first with former guitarist/backup vocalist Nick Thompson taking the reins as lead vocalist, Hit The Lights has crafted a wonderfully addictive album that pairs pop sensibility with a helping of pop-punk grit. Skip School, Start Fights is head and shoulders above the band’s previous full-length despite losing a little bit of the edge that made This Is A Stick Up…Don’t Make It A Murder a good pop-punk debut.
Chances are that if you’re reading this, you already know who Hot Water Music are. If not, to get you up to speed: one of the most important and consistent bands to grace the punk rock scene in the last decade or so. A band that is instantly recognizable, yet oddly unpredictable, not to mention the only band whose “indefinite hiatus” was just that, and not just a cop out cliché used instead of just admitting their demise. 
Without relying on the magic bag of tricks employed by many of the up-and-comers in hardcore, Verse has created an album that clashes an angry vocalist with a pot of dark melodies waiting to explode, making for an enjoyable hardcore album that actually has something to say. This is hardcore at its slow, methodically brooding best, albeit with a few uptempo tracks (“Old Guards, New Methods”, “Signals” and “Blind Salvation”) thrown in for good measure.
While The Phenomenauts continue to seek the mysteries of outer space for the betterment of science and honor, Valient Thorr has already brought some of that mystery to Planet Earth by being America’s finest (and maybe only) biker rock band from outer space. The Volcom five-piece has been rocking since 2001 in an effort to save earth through its musical message, and with that mission clearly not accomplished, the band presses on with its fourth full-length, Immortalizer. 
When this came out of the mailbox, I had no idea who The Submarines were, except possibly as a band that had a name that surprisingly had not been taken yet. You would have thought after The Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine” that people would have been all over it. But this polished LA-pop group has the indie formula down cold: an attractive duo with a crazy/weird love backstory. Blake Hazard (a girl!) and John Dragonetti (a boy!) used to date, then broke up, then wrote songs about one another, and I think are now married or something like that. 
It’s rare that any band can justify releasing a double album, especially given that this technically doubles the amount of full length discs in The Anniversary’s catalog. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of fat that could be trimmed from the album (namely nearly the entire first disc) and it easily could’ve been a single. Anniversary completionists will no doubt be pleased to have plenty, good or bad, as it is interesting to listen to the various tracks and watch the evolution of the band. Once that novelty is gone though, not much is left. 
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