Bangers - Small Pleasures (2011)

1. Making Friends

2. Wild Times, Outrageous Lies

3. Church Street in Ruins

4. Every Night's a Date Night

5. The Love Nest

6. Integral Faults

7. Irritants

8. Geeks and Paedophiles

9. Wizard Wise

10. A New Raymondo

Bangers is a band from Cornwall, England. They play a style I like to call "grown man pop punk", also known as orgcore. Bands like Bangers conjure up images of plaid shirts, Blue Moon lager, jaded aging punks, and "everything sucks now because my life was fun 10 years ago" lyrical themes. Bangers add a level of maturity you don't come to expect from pop punk while still maintaining the happy, upbeat feeling of the genre. When I listened to this album I felt something I don't usually feel from new music; nostalgia. The tracks on Small Pleasures cover topics that everyone has experienced at some point in their lives. It's not often I find an album that I can relate to as much as Small Pleasures. I was completely sucked into the music and atmosphere of this album, which is why Small Pleasures could easily be placed among the top pop punk releases of 2011.

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-Alex M.

EDIT: They're also very good live and anyone who ever gets the chance should go see them. - Danny M.

Living With Lions - Holy Shit (2011)

1.Maple Drive is Still Alive

2. Matthew's Anthem

3. Rough Around The Edges

4. Wake Up

5. Whatever You Want

6. When We Were Young

7. Honesty, Honestly

8. In Your Light

9. Regret Song

10. Pieces

Living With Lions is beardy pop punk from Van city, Canada. Holy Shit is the band's third full length, and first with new vocalist Stu Ross, formerly the mastermind behind Misery Signals. Did I mention you can really hear the beardy-ness of the band? It's like every member of this band got dumped by slutty girls, went home, smoked 17 packs of handrolled smokes, drank Gin from the bottle, and wrote one of my favourite albums of the year. Like seriously, fuck conventional genres, this band is pop orgcore. Honesty, Honestly is the standout track on this one, complete with gang chants, emotional lyrics, catchy melody and a really neat video. Whatever You Want and Matthew's Anthem are really sweet too. So is the rest of the album. Oh yeah, this is the band who got in (Holy) shit after people realized their 'anti-religious' album was funded by the Canadian Government ( get it, Holy Shit? Jesus is also picture as fecal matter on the album's insert if the point wasn't clear enough.). And their van nearly got destroyed during the Vancouver riots. Support these fellas. 

FFO: Daggermouth, The Wonder Years, None More Black

Sounds like: Manly men playing emotional pop punk

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stephen y.