After a woeful at best showing at this summer’s World Cup by the host nation, the people of Brazil were a fairly angsty frustrated bunch, a perfect time then for the country to be exporting a punk band. Yes you read that correctly, the sun-soaked South American nation famed for Samba, beach football, the Rio carnival and women with massive derrieres has a punk scene. Now skate punks End Of Pipe, from Brazil’s Santa Caterina region have built enough momentum in their homeland to be releasing their second EP ‘Keep Running’ internationally.
Unfortunately, the most striking thing about ‘Keep Running’ is how generic and predictable it is. The band widely acknowledge their love of late nineties melodic punk and have opted to stick rigidly to it as a blueprint. The bluntest way of summing this up is that you could throw any one of the six tracks on offer onto the soundtrack of one of the early Tony Hawks games and loose it.
Clearly to fit in with those types of tracks End Of Pipe would need to have a certain amount of adrenaline fuelled energy and big shout along qualities, which in fairness all of the tracks do in spades. It’s just that all of the songs rapidly feel very samey and forgettable. Too much of the EP sounds like you could switch around the vocals on any of the uber uptempo power chord driven tracks and, in all honesty, probably not notice.
Sure ‘Keep Running’ does have a raw unrefined fire, but the repetitive nature of the songs and the occasionally clumsy vocal delivery let it down. As much as nostalgia for late nineties power punk may sometimes have its appeal, simply listening to bands of that era is distinctly preferable to a crudely executed rehash. ‘Keep Running’ seems like it could make enjoyable enough background music for say driving or a work-out, but doesn’t quite have enough to grab the attention for any other time. Like Neymar and co at the world cup, End Of Pipe never manage to be anything beyond ok.
2.5/5
‘Keep Running’ EP by End Of Pipe is out now on Bomber Music.
End Of Pipe links: Website|Facebook|Twitter
Words by Dane Wright (@MrDaneWright)
