- Label
- Geffen
- Release date
- 5th November 2007
- Genre
- Rock
Punk-by-numbers which tries too damn hard
Angel & Airwaves tell us that they’re influenced by punk rock, new wave, the Descendents and Fugazi. How? Do they buy the same kind of trainers? Go to the same sandwich shops, perhaps? Musically, this album bears no relation to any of these things. The Spice Girls are more punk. Why do they feel the need to wear false influences on their sleeves?
If you didn’t know any better, you could mistake this for a Sum 41 B-sides album – maybe remixed by Butch Vig. It’s slick, shiny, glossy, epic and very poppy – which is not such a bad thing in itself, but calling it punk is like buying a picture of a dog playing poker and claiming it’s by one of the old masters. I-Empire is nothing more and nothing less than a nicely-put-together guitar pop-rock album with big, earnest ambitions. It’s seemingly more influenced by mid-Eighties powerpop and prog than anything else, particularly on tracks like Breathe and Love Like Rockets. And it’s utterly, utterly avoidable.
More to try: Garbage - Garbage Sum 41 – Underclass Heroes
