Reviews

What do you get when you take the best part of the Hope Conspiracy, add it to American Nightmare minus it’s best part, and throw in one fifth of The Suicide File? You get Bars, a Boston supergroup of sorts, and their inaugural recording Introducing... So with Tim from Ten Yard Fight and AN/GUTG channeling Lemmy and the Dead Boys, and Kevin Baker throwing down some abrasive vocals, a pretty intense record should emerge, right?
 
Unfortunately, Bars do not live up to their pedigree. Much of Introducing... is forgettable, despite Tim’s inventive guitar handling. Kevin Baker’s vocals aren’t oddly buried as they were on the last Hope Con LP, but his great lyrics are diminished by his insistance on cheesy choruses. Cool lines like “set fire, shoot out the stars,” from Like It Never Was are passed by quickly, but we hear the uninteresting phrase “up to my neck” too many times in Up To My Neck. Some great moments shine through, like the catchy old school AFI style ‘whoas’ complimenting the hard driving riff of Type Face Love letter, as Tim playfully builds complex guitar lines over the basic rhythm. The catchy and involved half tempo Too Far Down is the album’s main departure from the stripped down rock’n’roll meets old school hardcore sound, and it’s the most interesting track.  Bars take the necessary time on this one to just revel in their sound; the guttural bass, Tim’s soaring guitar, and Kevin’s powerful voice slowly talking over a diminished second vocal track of screams.
 
Bars seem to be working out a little residual anger left over from their other bands, particularly AN/GUTG.  The song title “Like It Never Was,” brings to mind the the intro from GUTG’s We’re Down Till We’re Underground, “(it’s sometimes like it never started).”  Bright Lights For Demise, a clever pun and the first track on Introducing... takes a potshot at Wes Eisold, the writer/singer from AN/GUTG who made them so great.  He moved to San Diego, got involved with Some Girls, and GUTG fell apart, so Bars warns “washed up and all through....Out to Cali is what I heard.” Maybe not about Wes in particular, but it’s hard not to read some ex-member tension into a song about ditching out on Boston. Bars bring the bar rock, the bring the rock’n’roll back into hardcore, but they can’t bring the excitement and energy of their old bands back from the dead.  Too bad.