Fifteen "Hush" 3 song CD
I really can't stand to hear the melodramatic Jeff Ott sing. He's the William Shatner of punk rock. That wouldn't be such a bad thing except for the fact that, unlike Will Shatner, Jeff Ott obviously takes himself very seriously. The victim oriented issues his lyrics bring up aren't as bad as the pedantic, self important, 12 stepper tone of voice that he uses when he sings them. The telling of the lyrics takes place over any other aspect of music on this CD. However, people who feel like victims of society and are looking for someone's sympathy (or in this case, if you are just upset about the review your band got in MRR) those people may like this. (Sub City)

Fifteen "Survivor" CD
I nominate Jeff Ott the most annoying man in punk rock. The guy is in his thirties, but he's still stuck in that teenage "know it all" mentality where, "Gee whiz, if everybody just did the right thing (if they would just believe what I believe) then everything would be okay." Take the song Landlord "It's a pretty simple equation, there's 99 people like you for every Cop and Landlord and Politician, if we learned to just say no/ There would be no more taxes, no more work and we'd all own our own homes." This is not the time of the Indians. Even most anarchists know that. For every one responsible anarchist willing to work to achieve the Utopian ideal of shared land there are 500 assholes standing in line to fuck it up. Jeff's solution is to shoot his landlord. The best part of this entire disc is the speech by Mumia A bu-Jamal that is tacked on the end. It's too bad he has to be associated with this embarrassing band. (Sub City)

Until the End CD ep
I've been getting into some hardcore lately so I wasn't sure why this didn't go over with me quite as well as other stuff because it nice n' chunky with energy and big shouting choruses. I decided it rubbed me the wrong way just because it felt mean and negative. The lyrics are all gloomy. Like the first song is an anti smoking song which is fine with me but the chorus is "Put the barrel down your throat, pull the fucking trigger." Then there are just loads of preachy type lyrics with the usual stuff like "Open your eyes..." "...knife in my back." "How can you live with yourself.?" "I put my faith in you and you let me down." There is an abundance of whining about negative things and the lyrics don't have any positive messages. Ironically the message on the CD says "We want to continue to spread a positive message." Which I guess means to them that they are directing their hate at things that are negative. (which makes it positive?) Despite the band's confusion this is still great to play when you are feeling angry and pissed off -like when I'm delivering pizza and someone stiffs me I pop this in and blast it. (Equal Vision)