Merit Maker – False Starts
Similar artists: blink-182, Green Day, Sum 41, The Offspring, The Ataris
Genre: Punk, Pop Punk, Alternative Rock
Currently, Merit Maker sounds like a band trying to find the ideal way to alternate between pleasing pop-punk hooks and angrier material.
Everyone seems to agree that one of the greatest things about modern music is its ability to help us deal with heavy pain and deep-set issues. Life doesn’t usually give you much respite to think about what you could’ve done better or how things could’ve worked out. If a song is really good, it creates just the right amount of disconnect from life to allow us to reflect.
This is one of the reasons why great rock music that expertly mixes the bitter with the sweet is so beloved. It offers a tremendous service. It lets you sing and dance while the rain is flooding nearby. It helps with seeing even the hardest, most horrendous times with a bit of humour.
Merit Maker have a great knack for bringing a zest of life to even the worst situations that they might consider writing a song about. At the moment, as heard on “False Starts,” the band is looking for balance between hopefulness and cynicism and between pretty mall-rock and nasty underground material. Fortunately, it sounds like they’ve found ways to merge the two and offer the medicine music fans may require.
Life In Vacuum – Lately
Genre: Punk, Post-Hardcore
Life In Vacuum have had enough and have the perfect vehicle for letting out all of the anger that they’ve accumulated.
Contrary to popular belief, anger can be very beneficial for regular individuals. Of course, one’s anger has to be dosed. Putting one’s fist to a window or attacking a traffic cop isn’t much good to anyone. These sorts of practices won’t help you get friends or become influential.
However, earnest anger can help you realise in clear detail what you dislike about your existence and can make you want to change it. At the heart of it, this is the very principle of punk rock. It’s pissed-off music for dreamers who dare to believe that there’s a better world waiting for them.
Life In Vacuum’s “Lately” sounds like the work of people who have seen everything that this world can offer them at present and are about to reach a boiling point. Good! Beyond this lies either nothing or drastic change. Judging by the passion-filled vocals and energy-driven instrumental, there’ll be enough to drive these musicians toward something better.
