Review: LWL

LWL
““Quarter Life Crisis””
(Pinball Records)

This sho am good, like Rice-a-Roni with chunks of hotdog in a pool of  barbeque sauce. It’s not as good as one of those world record breaker  gangbang videos, but really – what is? This “band” would have us believe that it’s from New Jersey, but everyone knows that New Jersey is just the set where they film every Trauma movie that features toxic waste superheroes or zombies. Maybe these guys are zombies. Notice my use of conspiratorial quotation marks. Zombies don’t rock. If this “band” is really back from the dead, they’re probably just using well-crafted thrash and punk to lull you, the listener, into a warm daze – so that they might harvest your sweet, buttery brains more easily.  For some reason, LWL throws in random samples from The Cable Guy and Say Anything (track 2).  The subliminal shit is hidden on tracks 16-24. Each one is supposedly a four-second slice of silence, but if you listen very closely, you can hear secret satanic commands to slay your parents. Suddenly you’re bombarded with a steamrolling cover of the Sesame Street theme song. I wouldn’’t lie about Sesame Street. I still watch it.  Steve LWL on vocals/guitar, Rob the bassist and Ivan on the drums – together they do not form Voltron. They just dish out dynamic, egg headed 4-chord rock with uncommon depth.  Steve’s has that old east coast punk rasp down cold. Rob’s backing lines are pitch-perfect. East Coast punk vocalists are just plain better, always. Creative, careful mixing, distortion, filters, sampling, a wide stylistic range and harmonies more akin to rock than power pop – work went into this.