Audio Karate
sounds blatantly, happily (and unhappily) young on
Space Camp
, its
Kung Fu
debut, and this continually reminds you that you've heard all of this before. Peppy
punk revivalist
anthems filled to the brim with earnest vocals, guitarists outdoing each other with power chord slides and keening solos, and enough pogoing melody to fill a thousand
Warped Tours
-- this is the sound of
. But who cares if you've heard it before when vocalist/guitarist
Art
is giving you his mushy, bleeding heart to hold while he blasts out another fabulous riff? "I remember when we first met," he sings in the bomb track opener,
"Rosemead."
"It was freshman summer I can't forget/Daydreams of you and I/Wrote your name on my folder a thousand times." If you're not teary-eyed yet, you will be when you find out
messed it up and she left him.
"Nintendo 89"
is another melodic nugget, featuring great breaks and rhythm guitar chug, thumping bass, and
Descendents
-worthy high-pitched wailing. Just when the energy-drink high that is
can't get any more hyper,
drops
"Senior Year,"
which tumbles one set of anthemic chords into a successively more powerful set. It's like listening to three of your favorite Cali
pop
-
punk
songs at once while looking at the picture of the one who got away in your high-school yearbook. And if
's singing about the same girl he lost in
"Rosemead,"
back at the beginning of the album, then the boys in
have on their freshly scrubbed hands the makings of a sugary
skatepunk
rock
opera
. ~ Johnny Loftus