Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Pet Sounds

So it’s another hot week, and hav­ing aban­doned one draft post and in the absence of any other mater­ial, I thought I’d write a brief review of my latest audio pur­chase — “State of Emergency”, the new (well, it was new in April) album from The Living End.

I already own sev­eral Living End discs — their debut self-titled album; follow-up “Roll On”, and their singles col­lec­tion “From Here On In” (includ­ing bonus disc of cov­ers), but this latest of releases is some­thing of a depar­ture from the stand­ard fare, intro­du­cing some­thing more akin to a post-ska fla­vour mooch­ing in and out of a few of the tracks. The driv­ing, vintage-sounding riffs of the early albums are some­what shunned in favour of a cleaner, more mod­ern sound, with greater use of trippy FX and more indie-sounding gui­tar work.

A more polit­ical spin on this one too — a sprinkle of “Roll On”-esque anthems for the work­ing man, most not­ably “Long Live The Weekend”, but also tracks like “Wake Up” fry­ing big­ger fish, with a cri­tique of recent events with the USA and Iraq, assess­ing Australia’s involve­ment. The disc flip-flops between heavy and light in a man­ner that keeps the listener on their toes, par­tic­u­larly in later tracks where the Shadows-esque “Order of the Day” is sand­wiched between hard-rawking “Reborn” and “Nowhere Town”.

Overall an excel­lent album, not quite reach­ing the heights of their self-titled or “Modern ARTillery” albums, but cer­tainly hold­ing its own. The move from the “clas­sic” sound is executed with pan­ache, but it doesn’t quite get the feet thump­ing like the roller­coaster rocka­billy of earlier mater­ial. High points: “Long Live the Weekend”, “Black Cat” and “We Want More”.

“State of Emergency” is avail­able from Amazon for £16.99 delivered, or from £9.12 on the Marketplace.