Album Review: Call It Fiction - Something I've Never Felt

Pop punk ain’t dead. The revival of (not) everyone’s favourite sugar coated genre is in full swing, and with bands like Four Year Strong, Set Your Goals, The Swellers and Man Overboard enjoying great success, as well as highly anticipated comebacks from the likes of heavyweights Yellowcard and Blink 182 the immediate future looks bright.

But with this increased popularity, comes a wave of pretenders, charlatans riding the coattails of a genre on the up. Unnecessarily harsh? Perhaps. But the fact remains, that for every good band on the scene, there are a hundred uninspiring and mediocre ones chasing the dream.

Call It Fiction, straight out of Akron, Ohio, bring to the table something you’ve probably heard before, a half decent pop punk EP with standard quirky artwork and rammed with gang vocals, synth and poppy melodies.

Opener 'When You Give It All You Got, What’s Left to Give' delivers a bright and bubbly start whilst front man Elliot Blair’s catchy-as-hell assertion that “It’s more than a dream, it’s the real thing” on 'Change of Heart' is by far the highlight of the record.

But not every track maintains this high level, seeing labouring, lethargic offerings 'American Werewolf in Cleveland' and 'Sitting in the Crowd' fade quickly from the memory.

Closer '2012 Couldn’t Come Quicker' ends the EP on a Usain Bolt paced adrenaline high, jamming everything that’s great about pop punk into three and half minutes, capping off what is, for the most part, a positive offering.

If you’re a fan of the genre, definitely worth a listen, if not, this almost certainly won’t sway you.

3.5/5

'Something I've Never Felt' by Call It Fiction is released on March 5th.

Call It Fiction on Facebook, Purevolume, MySpace, Bandcamp and Twitter.

Liam McGarry