(Wolverine Records 2019)
Bringing The Bad Back Home
I Persevere
Roaming The Dead End Streets
Shadow Brawler
Chasing The Night Down (To The Screaming End)
The Blind Leading The Blind
Cannon Fodder Blues
Age Of The Addictive Personality
Wayward Son
The Crowning Of A Fool
Going Down Smilin'
The Hyperjax. They're everything I like about punk and I'm picky as fuck about punk. With that said though, they're no punk band. They're very much the anti-pigeonhole outfit. They just have the elements I like about some punk bands. Catchy melodies and intelligent lyrics dealing with social issues, and observations about our current generation and life in general. Of course they also have the rockin' ingredient of a big ol' slap bass. They are not the much maligned "punk with a slap bass" combo though. They're way beyond that and are very much their own machine. They always have been since their inception in the mid 90s. But years of honing their craft and sound must make the guy down the record shop sigh with dismay as he tries to slot their records into the genre-specific sections of his music emporium. I have a press release here which states "Like The Jam meets Stray Cats meets The Living End". The Jam comparison I can see as Sam Woods' lyrics are comparable to those of Paul Weller. The Stray Cats...not so much and they're everything The Living End are not. That's one band that started out good and became something else altogether. Conversely The Hyperjax started out good and became something great. They didn't "progress" in such a way as to completely alienate their original audience. Sam Woods really has a way with words and together with Dan Clark and Neil Holden the trio have created an album that has none of the grating annoyance of 99% of punk and none of the tired run-of-the-mill blood and gore of 99% of psychobilly. What we have here is simplistic yet cleverly created, finely executed, punk rockin' parables for the denizens of many's the underground scene.
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