THE LIVING END "White Noise" (Universal) three / ten

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My first introduction to the The Living End came when I picked up their self titled debut album in a bargain bin whilst on holidays in the States. Having seen them likened to an Aussie version of The Clash and early Green Day, the $2 price tag was too good to ignore. It wasn't bad. Nothing mind-blowing but steady enough.

However that's where my interest in the band ended, laying dormant until the hard record review taskmaster at [Crude] dropped this disc into my hand. I guess I hadn't expected their sound to have changed much, which is normally the done thing with a lot of these three chord trick pop punk bands, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

The albums opener, 'How Do We Know', told me all I needed to know - a sub Zepplin hard rock swagger infused with staccato RATM guitars. 'Make The Call' follows the same path, rolling out the average rock tune awash with cheesy cringe worthy carry on. I can imagine - no - I'm fully certain this will irk a lot of their fans. The majority of the songs on this record are just plain wrong, terrible stuff to be honest and the likes of the title track, 'Loaded Gun' and 'Kid' are truly awful crimes against music - if you include a line such as "Global Warming just ain't cool" in your lyrics, then you're pretty much dead to me.

The only saving graces, 'Raise The Alarm' and 'Moment In The Sun' arrive too little, too late to save the day and it comes as no surprise to read that these two were released as singles from the album. The world might have been spared this garbage if Billy Joe Armstrong had ignored a demo the band sent him in 1995, which led to him putting them on Green Day's Australian tour of the same year and thus giving them their big break. Avoid at all costs.

Trevor Meehan
www.myspace.com/thelivingend

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