Reviews

Tight denim jeans, snug black t-shirts, long hair and a sound hopelessly crying out to be a-typical of the usual rundown of any pop-punk band that exists today. A group of regular guys with nothing but instruments, good intentions, and a need for love expressed through lyrics, begging to be pioneers of originality in their genre. How much more is there to say about every band that has come out with this rapidly tiring gimmick in the past few years? Unfortunately, The Killing Moon is no exception.
 
The Killing Moon’s EP, “A Message Through Your Teeth”, was disappointing from the very first power-pop guitar chord to the last poorly rehearsed screamo cry. The EP manages to combine generic instrumentals with vocals similar to what I can only assume would be the result of a My Chemical Romance cover band with less backbone. Each song is infested with a brass section that is more a discomfort to the ears than anything remotely original. Combine this with what seems to be Taking Back Sunday’s second-string rhythm section, and you have a pop-punk disaster on your hands.
 
To release an EP that lacks originality and effort is one thing, but to slack off on lyrics such as “The homemade scars on my arms/are slowly fading,” badly enough to write  almost every song about physically hurting someone else (usually a conniving woman) or themselves is simply laziness. I have trouble criticizing lyrics, because really, who am I to judge raw human emotion expressed in words? But perhaps a song about something other than lost love and a bitter heart is what they need to separate them from every other band that ever had a member’s girlfriend dump him in high school. The Killing Moon’s “A Message Through Your Teeth” is not an EP that I will pop in for casual listening purposes any time soon. If you are looking to challenge your musical genre biases and try something new this CD isn’t for you, but I can see why a new generation of naive pop-punk kids would dig it, because of it’s easy to follow rhythms, and frustrated and easily dissectible lyrics that most high school students can relate to.
 
There is nothing wrong with the EP as a whole. There is nothing profoundly irritating about it, it isn’t overbearing or profoundly difficult to listen to, but this is only the result of taking very little risk in the making of it.