Album Review: Marwood - Welcome To Marwood EP

Their myspace claims them as frequent listeners of Polar Bear Club, The Lawrence Arms, The Get Up Kids and The Weakerthans among others, and I for one would consider that a very decent set of influences. However, there is honouring your influences and there is disgracing them.

UK punk rockers Marwood is none of those. Their "Welcome To Marwood EP" kicks off with "I Still Miss Rigby's", the song works itself over what would sound like anthemic material if it wasn't from the average production (to be expected however, considering it was self-produced). The sense of epicness hinted from the first few measures fades away more and more as the song progresses to fall in an uninspired brand of melodic punk rock. After their poor start, "Unplanned Notes" unleashes an up-beat standard punk rock start but falls into the conventions set by every other imitator-band out there, but the second half of the song, featuring duelling vocal lines and heartier punches, shows hints of what the band could achieve if they didn't try so hard to fit in with their idols.

Sadly third offering "Two Polar Bears and Four Seals" falls back in to folk-influenced punk rock territory smelling very distinctly of Polar Bear Club and Attack In Black. "Death In The Family" finds the band finally stretching out of their comfort zone and working with darker undertones and some crunchy high-tone guitars, but yet again the song quickly reveals its flaws especially in the vocal area and ends up feeling dragged out and overly serious.

It's hard to think about where to fit this band in a scene so full of transatlantic massive bands, and even harder to take them seriously considering the amateurish nature of their "Welcome To Marwood EP". Hopefully, this is only the signs of a band insecure about how they want to sound and that soon enough they'll pick up their game and come back with some British punk they can be proud of.

2/5

Marwood on MySpace

James Berclaz-Lewis