Reviews

Wednesday Night Heroes play straightforward punk rock. Since punk has been around for thirty years, any album released by a straightforward punk rock band has to be really, really good. Luckily, this album is.  
 
Guilty Pleasures, the band’s third full-length (first off BYO), made me well up with nostalgia for hot summer shows and packed, shitty clubs the moment I heard it. I really wanted to go out and shout along with a loud band and possibly even wave my fist in the air and join a mosh pit. But I don’t think very many bands could replicate the kind of energy and unchecked rambunctious attitude of Wednesday Night Heroes.  
 
They remind me of the classic punk rock my dad used to play on our old record player or the street punk my friends would play driving around in high school. There’s some Casualties, Clash, Naked Raygun, The Exploited and Minor Threat in their sound. But the best comparison I could make is probably just to being drunk. Guilty Pleasures is probably, in essence, equivocal to a Friday night of good drinking.  
 
Every single song has a sing-a-long chorus or shouted backing vocals. Either way, within two listens you’ll learn the words (which the band plainly encourages in the lyric book) and find yourself uncontrollably singing along. It’s infectious. You can’t help it. Nobody can. Seriously, you’d have to have a parking meter up your ass to hate this stuff.  
 
There are a lot of bands that bitch about the world and how it sucks. And I agree, it sucks and all, but sometimes I just want something proactive, something that makes the world suck less – something in the vein of Operation Ivy’s Sound System. And that’s what this band is.
 
  Honestly, there’s really nothing new here. The lyrics don’t blow me away; the music isn’t exceptional. Punk has not been reinvented, nor even been altered. It’s just been played really well. When listening to Guilty Pleasures, I could let my brain go and have fun, but know that I was still listening to something smart and good.  
 
My only real complaint is that I’m listening to this on dad’s old speakers in my apartment. I want to go to a show. Wednesday Night Heroes is out of Canada and the only touring they have scheduled is Canadian. And I’m not Canadian. Cross the Great Lakes, my friends. Come to America before I have to wear jackets to shows.