Arthritic Foot Soldiers- Only Beer Can Save Us Now
Voltage Records – XLNT CD-7- 2006
By Zack Attaran
Perhaps I’m too bitter. That’s the only thing I can think of after hearing this album all the way through. In all fairness though, I only spent seventeen minutes actually
listening to this punk rock release. Wait a minute, that’s how long the actual CD is, if you factor in the four minutes of silence on the last track. Anyway, upon doing research on this album I heard nothing but praise for it. All of the reviews seemed to pivot on the same idea that this was the most “raw” stuff they’d ever heard. I got excited, because I was finally going to hear my first
real punk.
Alas, my premonitions were obliterated once it started playing. I was graced with sixty second long songs, shitty lyrics, raunchy british singing and generic songs that literally, repeated the same riff over and over again. Honestly, I wish I could bust out the mp3’s just to show you the exact similarities in the songs. I must admit though, I got excited when I saw that the final song would be six minutes long and was curious how they were going to pull it off. Well, when the song came, it was one minute and fourteen seconds of the same old punk, and then it just stopped. It stayed completely silent for four minutes, and then busted into the same riff, except they used
Bob Marley lyrics instead of their crappy ones. It did make me laugh, though, so they get a few points there.
There is one song,
'Architecture of Life', that is actually pretty good and has a fun sing-along chorus, if you can get past it’s short length. A few songs had brief moments of melody which did excite me temporarily, but then it just reverted back to the normal riffs that were used earlier. On some tracks, they didn’t even bother to record them in the studio, they just did it live. You can’t tell the difference though, so it doesn’t really matter.
Maybe my expectations were too high. I mean, a group of forty year olds singing about good ole’ punk doesn’t make for a revolutionary album. Whatever, this was a good laugh at the end of the day and it appears as if the guys are just having fun, and well, maybe I did too.
3/10
UM’s Review Rating Scale
Official Arthritic Foot Soldiers Website
Official Voltage Records Website
