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1. Subject A
MP32. Bottomfeeder
3. Sugar Pills
4. A Book Of Love Stories
5. Postcard From Los Angeles
Reviewed by:
Cory // Published:
4/16/2006On paper, this should be the worst CD I've ever heard: emotional "hard rockers" with a horn section playing pop tunes. In practice, The Killing Moon sound something like the bastard child of Fall Out Boy, Catch 22 and Hawthorne Heights. Even that sounds bad enough that I'd never listen to it if it hadn't been sent to my house. After spending a considerable amount of time with this EP however, I can honestly say that I definitely don't hate it, although I'm not quite willing to say I actually like it. I can't help but give these guys a certain amount of credit for writing good pop-punk songs and realizing that they'd need some sort of gimmick to get anywhere these days. The five songs on A Message Through Your Teeth had me nodding my head and even humming along after awhile.
Just so it's clear, The Killing Moon is NOT a ska band. They look and sound like most of the girl-pants-wearing contemporaries, they just happen to have horns. For the most part, the brass section simply accents the songs through distortion pedals, providing support to the guitar lines, which must help the band's single guitar player sound a lot bigger live. It's hard not to laugh when you hear lyrics about cutting yourself crossed with a horn line in "A Book Of Love Stories," but the absolutely ridiculous moments are few and far between. Well, the absolutely ridiculous moments involving horns anyway. The breakdowns are all laughable and most of the lyrics are awful, but that's kind of a given with this kind of music.
Bottom Line: I don't really care about pop-emo-punk-whatever, but I can recognize when a band is trying hard to set themselves apart and The Killing Moon succeed in that attempt. The songwriting is interesting, the brass gimmick works for the most part, and this record overcomes my first impression of it. If you made it all the way through this review and still want to hear this, it might be worth a download. Otherwise, don't bother.
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