Thursday, May 17, 2012

Album Review: Batfoot! - Brain Dead

A few summers ago, I went through this huge pop punk phase. Like, a hardcore three month streak of nothing but pure pop punk. The Ergs!, The Lillingtons, The Steinways, The Copyrights, The Dopamines, Teenage Bottlerocket, Dear Landlord, Screeching Weasel, The Queers, Broadway Calls, Teen Idols, The Huntingtons, The Leftovers, The Methadones, The Unlovables... you name them, and I probably at least checked them out, if not listened to them on repeat for days. Unless their recordings didn't exist back then. Like House Boat. Except then House Boat released The Delaware Octopus toward the end of summer/beginning of the school year and I fell in love with that shit too.

Batfoot! was one of the many bands that I discovered during that point in my life. I didn't think they were the best band, but they wrote short songs about silly subjects. And they had an exclamation point in their name. So yeah, I liked that a bunch.

At the time, they only had a single EP, Melodic Tardcore. I enjoyed it, and then they had two EPs when Utsukushii came out. Except I didn't like that one as much. And then my computer crashed and they were one of the many bands that I never got around to replacing on my hard drive. They were still on my iPod, but at that point the new school year had started and I was already off discovering new bands and whatnot.

Flashforward to now. Apparently Batfoot! is not only still together, but they've released their debut full length, Brain Dead (and they're big enough to now have their own Wikipedia page. What.). Featuring 16 songs in 23 minutes, Brain Dead follows the same formula as their EPs, as well as more or less the entire Ramones-core scene: three chords played at lightning fast speeds (sometimes a fourth chord is added during the bridge), the songs are all over either by or before the two minute mark, and the singer has a bit of a drawl that is similar to that of Joey Ramone. It's a lot of fun to listen to, and it's really easy to learn the choruses and sing along, but like other bands in the genre, I really have to be in the right mood for it. Maybe I just feel that way now because I decided to write this at almost 2:30am instead of going to bed like I should have done an hour ago.

In spite of the "needing to be in the right mood" comment I just made, Batfoot!'s debut full length album is actually pretty good. They've still got their sense of humor from the EPs, and they still play fast, short songs about liking girls and hating other dudes. And in the end, isn't that what's really important? [Sometimes].

You can stream and/or buy the whole thing at bandcamp! For your convenience, I've embedded the album stream. Check it out if it sounds like it's up your alley!

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