WITH HONOR „This is Our Revenge”

Music: Melodic Pop Punk/Hardcore
Country: USA
Website: http://www.withhonor.com
Duration: 27.04
Cool Songs: Like Trumpets, Plot Two, Closets, Bottom Up, A New War.

I’m at a bit of a loss with this new ‘With Honor’ disc. Throw me some classic Victory records hardcore and I’m happy as pig in shit, but when the same said label signs a band so utterly generic and commercially pop-punk friendly as this Connecticut four piece, it really disappoints. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh considering the slew of faceless emo-core acts that Victory has thrown us over the past year anything esembling ‘old school’ aesthetics is almost like a breath of fresh air. Still, I can’t go past the fact that ‘With Honor’ is a fairly contrived MTV teen-crowd pleasing affair. This isn’t going to be pretty.

Surprisingly, ‘With Honor’ actually has some sort of Hardcore credibility within their ranks. The brother Aust (Jay & Jeff) are former members of ‘Harmartia’ who released somewhat of a landmark Metalcore disc in ‘To Play The Part’. Yet, assuming that ‘This is our Revenge’ might have some sort of link to that said record would be a big mistake. The use of the guitar is about the only real similarity. ‘With Honor’ are clearly a different band to the Aust boys previous incarnation and with the backing of Victory and a slick Brian McTernan production, ‘Revenge..’ aims straight for the heart of mainstream pop-punk territory.

The most frustrating aspect about ‘With Honor’ and their commercially driven tendencies is that they sound so damn familiar. If you were blind to their past, this could be one of hundreds of other similar sounding acts. Uber Hardcore/Punk acts like Bad Religion and Minor Threat are conjured up more than enough, but in terms grabbing their slice of the ‘pop-punk-pie’ With Honor are up against the likes of Comeback Kid, Rise Against and Hardcore veterans like Bane. But unlike those band, ‘WH’ are unable to infuse any semblance of ‘old-school’ feeing into their music without coming off incredibly watered down, contrived and most significantly ‘safe’. For all of its lyrical posturing and overtly frenetic pace, there’s simply no danger associated with this album. It’s actually far too freaking happy.

The familiarity of ‘With Honor’ is further accentuated by the vocal performance of Todd Mackey. Sure, the guy does his absolute best within the confines of his bands music, but as far as providing something a little more atypical in terms of tone and vocal nuances, it just isn’t the case – Todd is your virtual teen pop-punk carbon copy. Admittedly the standard verse/chorus/gang vocal structures don’t help him too much either.

With Honor is nothing more than a solid, but thoroughly unremarkable melodic pop-punk act. Unfortunately, they’ll probably be huge. In fact, they’re likely to be this year’s Warped Tour new favourite band. They fit the mould like a glove. If that’s your bag and you just cannot resist commercially driven teen punk anthems, With Honor will please you no end. Me? I’m off to listen to The Cro-Mags!! That’s some REAL shit right there folks…..

note: 5

Tracklist

Like Trumpets
Plot Two
Elevens
Up and Out
Closets
Bottoms Up
20 Strong
You Always Said
A New War
Small Dreams
In a Bottle