Album Review

Guns on the Run
For Glory

Even before listening to For Glory, the second release from Guns on the Run (Creep Records/Blackout Records), I was a little leary just looking at the cover art. A generic stars-and-stripes shield draped with a banner reading "Rock and Roll", resembling something tattooed on the weather beaten arm of an aging biker, originally led me to believe this band was some sort of "trucker rock" outfit that somehow ironically managed to emerge out of the Philly metropolitan area. Interesting as that may have been, that wasn't the case. Though I was pleased to find out that "For Glory" was actually an upbeat hardcore punk album, after listening for a while I was left pretty disappointed. The band is instrumentally strong, but sloppy vocals led me to read the lyrics in the liner notes, which turned out to be pretty directionless and generic, not to mention boasted a glaring spelling error in the second song ("oppologies"?!). The upbeat, fast paced instrumentals also clash with the deep, kind of melancholy lyrics of most of the songs on the album. A listen to their second release, I'll See You in Elysia, yielded even stronger instrumentals but lyrics just as vague as those on their first disc. Visiting their MySpace page was a letdown as well, as it's loaded with plenty of flashy layout graphics but offers no background information on the band at all. Lastly, the location listing set to "Killadelphia" and stage names all ending in "Gunnz" push the whole thing right over the edge. I get the feeling that this band definitely has talent that can be salvaged, but overall I was left with the impression that in making their first two musical attempts, this band moved a little too fast and tried a little too hard.

Posted by
Christine Gibboni