Artist: Thirtyseven
Title: This Is What I Want
Label: Blood & Ink Records
Release Date: August 6, 2013
Reviewer: Jessica Cooper
Track Listing:
- You Made Your Beard, Now Lie In It
- Everyday
- Time Brings Change
- The Right Direction
- Called Out
- Me vs. You
- I Hate My Job Way Too Much To Not Do That
- Caught Up
- Story of the Year
- Best of Me
- Moving On
I’ll start by challenging anyone who reads this to figure out where the borrowed riff is in this album, and tell me what band and song it comes from (knowing the Thirtyseven guys, it wasn’t done to rip off said band, but it may as well be a tailored Where’s Waldo stunt).
Now that that’s out of the way, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s excited about Thirtyseven putting out their first album ever, and with Blood & Ink…that’s huge! These guys have been a favorite of mine for a while, and they put on a great show. Maybe I just have an unnatural affinity for Texas punk bands, but I don’t think that’s a terrible thing to admit. A lot of great music comes from Ye Old Republic and I haven’t come across one single group that hasn’t immediately grabbed my attention.
This Is What I Want has a lot of energetic, hard-hitting and real lyrics, and is something that I get so into, I don’t realize it’s over until the familiarity of the first track strikes up again. It would suffice to say that they know what they’re doing with what they’ve got.
The album features guest vocals of Chad Urich of Venia on “Moving On” and Steve Soboslai of Punchline on “Caught Up” and that’s a pretty sweet pair-up of talent if you ask me. Then there’s the bold track “Called Out” that addresses the issue of faith being used to condemn rather than comfort:
“Called out / My Christianity / Why can’t you speak, / Without talking down to me? / We won’t agree. / Called out / My Christianity / Why can’t you speak, / Without talking down to me? / Your mindset is weak. / We won’t agree.”
The band goes along with a common theme found in hardcore music as well, making a declaration of loyalty in their song, “I Hate My Job Way Too Much To Not Do That”:
“I won’t stand up while you are down. / I’ll run this race on solid ground. / I don’t want to be remembered by anything but a dude who did what he could.”
Overall: This is something I’ve been waiting on for a while, and I’m glad these guys finally have something out for people to enjoy. I’ll probably be listening to it for more than a few days. Preorders are up through Blood & Ink’s website.
RIYL: Blink 182, MxPx, Midtown, Set Your Goals, Messengers, Take It Back!, and Venia.