My Awesome Compilation - Actions (Sore Point Records) Release 08/08/05

My Awesome Compilation are the mixtape from hell. What the world doesn’t need is yet another sub-standard Blink 182 skater punk band with all the quirky fun bits sucked out that kind of made Tom, Mark and Travis the guilty little secret in your music collection. Their debut album ‘Actions’, produced by Hundred Reasons Larry Hibbett, takes in eleven songs of duelling vocals, buzz saw guitars chugging riffs that’s hard to dislike but simply sounds too much like the seemingly endless supply of paper thin emo bands that are flying off the record industry production line lately.

Opening with probably the best track on the album, the chunkily riffed and insanely thunderous ‘You Need Discipline’, you could be optimistic that this album would live up to it’s name but sadly it soon dissolves into a unidentifiable mish-mash of similar sounding skater anthems. Quite frankly you could listen to tracks two to eight and not realise that they were separate songs. There’s nothing particularly offensive about any of the tracks, what grabs you instantly is this band lacks any identity to set them apart and make you sit up and take notice.

The only two tracks that really stand out are the five minute long ‘What You Do’ which has the softer edge of Jimmy Eat World with its heartfelt melody and whispered vocals and title track ‘Actions’ – all soaring guitars and humungous hooks providing the most rasping number, however the rest remain pedestrian. That is until you get to the final song on the album ‘Awake’ which sheds the emo epitaph in favour of loosely slung acoustic guitars, marching drums and a deep baritone piano – finally something to get your teeth into that doesn’t fall apart under closer examination.

‘Actions’ is an album that takes too predictable a line, it suffers from a lack of originality and instead of challenging the generally dire stereotypical view of the emo/skater punk genre it simply reaffirms it. Not only that, it’ll probably be lapped up by the jet black haired, skinny trousered, slip-on van wearing kids in the street as the next big thing and raised to a level that should at this point not be attaining. More mediocre than awesome.