By Monk
Over the past three, now going on four, decades, the southern California region, or SoCal, could be described as the homeland of pop punk, with the sunny climate seeming to inspire generations of skaters and surfers to express themselves through music as bright and breezy as a dawn over the Pacific coastline.
With this, their first new release in three years, Chaser add to the impressive canon of stridently confident releases by the region and their progenitors, pulling from all the precursive tropes to deliver 13 tracks of passionate, energetic and melodic punk rock with a characteristic positive vibe, despite addressing some of the darker lyrical and personal themes from which the genre has not been afraid to shy away.
Chaser lie at the heavier, more metal-tinged end of the pop/skate punk spectrum, as exemplified on the likes of opener ‘Brand New Enemy’, the visceral ‘Control The Bleed’ – which also provides the album’s only negative comment, as it fades out too early – ‘Settle The Scores’ and the totally ‘banging ‘Just Breathe’.
As the band themselves say, “in life, we are continuously presented with challenges, each to our own degree. Managing our personal struggles, we tend to beat ourselves up when the outcome is not as perfect as we envisioned. Instead, let’s learn to appreciate and revel in the small wins that occur on a daily basis. They each carry weight and over time, have the potential to add up to greatness!”
With ‘Small Victories’, Chaser, both collectively and individually, have risen to those challenges, taken that weight, shouldered the burden and turned the experience into a truly great pop punk album which will serve as the soundtrack not just for this summer but many more to come.
Strident stuff.
- ‘Small Victories‘ is out now.
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