SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: STRATEJACKET – BAD START

STRATEJACKET
BAD START
EDGEOUT RECORDS

In an era where pop-punk is experiencing a renaissance, it is challenging to discover bands that accurately represent the spirit of the 90s and early to mid-2000s, when the genre peaked. There was an unbridled sense of boundless creativity that was bursting with potential and promise. While the era of modern pop-punk has certainly done its job of maintaining the creative endurance that its past helped to create, there is still a missing element of nuanced staying power that very few bands master and succeed at bringing into modernity. Alternative pop-punk bands like StrateJacket have done their homework in this regard, seeking to not only reinvoke the nostalgia of years gone within their instrumental and lyrical candour but also provide a fresh and vibrant progressive take on the genre. Their debut album, Bad Start, embodies all the best concepts of an early Green Day, with a hint of zestful hard rock and punky edge that brings together the melodically aggressive magic this album has created.

“Bad Start” is the opening to this trip down memory lane. A culmination of sun-soaked, edgy California guitar riffs and drums, StrateJacket’s ability to create catchy and effective hooks resides in such first impressions, its weight successfully carried on through the rest of the record.

The album comfortably strolls into the second track, “Be My Drug”. Adorned with Jackson Roemers’ sneering melodic vocal play that dances around the walls of infectious, vibrant synths, resonating drums, and crunchy guitar riffs, “Be My Drug” creates this contagious momentum that continues with “End of Time”. One of the best examples that paint this band’s musical style, StrateJacket is a band that masterfully blends vernal showmanship with disillusioned, pontifical punk ideals and daydreamy emotional pain anthemic, angry, and beautifully accented with romanticized arena-tinged gang vocals.

This band’s talent is evident in the melodic, stargazing haze of “Cut The Cord” and “Dreamcatcher”, offering a decadent slice of pop-punk heaven offset by bird-sweet, temperamental vocals, deep, chest-pumping percussion energies, and crafty lyricism. These two tracks, among the most fun and well-written pieces the band has recorded for their debut release, will stick in your head long after the album is over.

“Torch” slows down their punchy, fresh-faced emotional muse with denuded, grungy guitars, wefted into yearnful and tender lyricism before bringing us back to the energetic, grimy energies of “Are You Tired Of Me”, cutting straight to the point and looking you straight in the eye with a sense of angst and frustration, making this track such a fun experience to listen to.

“Too Much” cohesively captures a state of helplessness and anxiety within the emotional duress of pent-up aggression and an exhausting feeling of burnt-out rebellion, before ending the record with another muted acoustic number, “Just Like You”. Ending the record with an evocative, wistful experience that is almost desperate in its bleak conviction to find better, the record comes to a solemn close.

Bad Start is an album that puts itself in the shoes of a dejected, misty-eyed experience that aims to find its way to calmer shores after the emotional pain of a deteriorating relationship and the pangs of social and internal struggles of growing up and getting older. For a debut album, StrateJacket conquers releasing an enjoyable first offering of their careers, and a sign of a bright future on the horizon.

SPILL FEATURE: EMBARKING ON A NEW JOURNEY – A CONVERSATION WITH STRATEJACKET

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