Review: Hard-Ons

Hard-Ons
“Very Exciting!”
(Bomp! Records)

Like the Dwarves?  Then you probably already own some Hard-Ons.  “Blender punk” is what I dub this. Meaning, they throw all these punky styles into the mix and depending on what track you hit, you get a wildly different song.

“Sunny” opens this up with happy bounce-along punk with a rockin’ solo guitar jam part.  Shifting gears into “Punk Police” it gets faster and more rocking with a huge chorus refrain.  And the more indie rock vibe hinted at in “Scared of it All” gets a full blown indie rock beauty treatment in “Killing Me”.  I hope you are getting the idea because it seems like out of 15 tracks, a proper review needs to almost touch on all of the songs.  Cohesive this album is not.  Varied and peppered with great songs it most definitely is.  It’s just the constant shifting of gears, trying to find a common thread is a challenging listen at times.
What holds this together (mostly) is the guitar lines that support very song crafted lyrics with that muscle you hear in a good Foo Fighters song.  Basically, a lot of rock, with flavors of punk when they rage and more indie stuff when they get melodic.

A good Rage Against the Machine riffs crawls up the backbone of “(Everytime I Hear) Techno (I Pray For Death)”.  That track is also a good dose of the sense of humor you know you are gonna get with a band called Hard-Ons.  What throws me the most is when they get this like, Blink182-lite bouncy punk thing going.  It’s very ‘sweet’.  They are much better when they cut it loose. Crazy Australians.  Seriously.