Review: Pennywise

Pennywise
““Land of the Free?””
(Epitaph)

Ever get that feeling? You know, that deep burning inside your heart, mind starts to race, palms and the back of your neck become cold and clammy? New release from Pennywise. I’ll admit to my ignorance; I haven’t listened to Pennywise since that song in the 90’s made it on the radio-reruns for a while, “Same Old Story”.  As it turns out, I heard the first single off this album on a new independent (92.1) radio station deep in the armpit of shit radio, San Diego. This album is quite good, and I can see that musician wise, nothing has changed since I heard them last. They fucking blast thru songs.  No dilly dallying here. ‘Fuck Authority’ seems a little too trite of a song, but it still rocks. Unfortunately, I’’ve noticed that Pennywise tends to get lumped into that ‘surf rock’ category, and not in a good way. A similar example would be the Green Day Factor. 95% of any punk rock kid knows every lyric of Green Day’s ‘Dookie’ but dare they sport a GD patch or shirt? Hell no, that’s uncool. I think the only thing saving PW from GD ignorance is that PW are way heavier and faster then little Billy Joe’s arms could ever move, and that makes them better. I thought the best thing about this album was despite it’s brisk half hour of bliss, my CD player repeated it about four times before I noticed it, which is something to be said. How many CD’s can you set repeating themselves? None, bitch! Dare you think anything else could survive the awesome power of repetitions?!?