The Living End

The Australian band's 2001 release rocks with just as much energy and conviction as their earlier releases. The band's big, Angus Young-worshiping guitars, love of Rockabilly, and anthemic Punk-Pop is a welcome reprieve from the SoCal cookie-cutter Punk often lumped in with this band.

With punk pop's day in the sun fast turning into a distant memory, the Living End's second
album is the perfect record to take you back to that time when Green Day did it all for the
Dookie. But Roll On is actually closer kin to an even hoarier antecedent: the Clash's London
Calling. The Living End, a trio from Melbourne, Australia, stomp all over the boundaries
between punk, reggae, rockabilly and plain old rock & roll - and it still sounds like... More >

So whatever happened to that Clash-sounding '80s band from Switzerland, I forget their name? Right now I wish I knew. Presumably they didn't turn into an Alarm-acting '00s band from Australia, because these Melbourne laddies are Young, you bet, and also Indigenous in their Anglo-Saxon way, imbued with "the Rose Tattoo and AC/DC [in their rock dreams--ed.] and the Angels." Notice they don't mention INXS or Midnight Oil, relevant in their unfettered ambition and feckless idealism, respectively. Nor is the latter anything to write Stone about. Of the approximately four political songs, only the immigration-keyed "Don't Shut the Gate" is effective even artistically, and the antiunion tack of the opener, however well justified by specifics, is a bad sign. It's no fun to point out that dumb bands give agitprop a bad name. But they do. (Grade - C)