RIGHT IDEA:
Self-titled: 7"
Aw, man. It’s really hard to review “youth crew”-styled hardcore at this point in my life. Look, I got syringe and ink Youth Of Today fist tattoo when I was fourteen years old. I sang for a band called New Direction before I had armpit hair. I still listen to Bold. A lot. But I dunno… it’s just so hard to review new bands like this without accusing them of being complete clones. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t been part of that world in so long, or perhaps, as was certainly the case “back in the day,” imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery in the “old school” hardcore genre. And it’s not that I don’t love any new hardcore. I’m still a total fiend for killer new hardcore bands (see the Rot In Hell review), but I just cannot begin to enjoy this Right Idea record. It just… it offers nothing unique or interesting at all. Okay, so if you were just getting into this stuff today then maybe you’d love this, and you could go and see the band play, which is always a plus (although with the amount of reunions in the past few years, you can go and pick-up-change to most of the classic NYHC bands…), and you could have a really great adolescence, as I did, as a clean cut hardcore kid, root beer in hand. But for those of you who’ve been down this road before, I’d say it’s pretty safe to just cruise on by. –Dave Williams (Refuse)