Album Review: Fight On

In 1967 something happened. There was a shift in peoples mindsets and that resulted in a shift in the musical landscape. It had happened before in the 50’s with Elvis and it happened again in 1977 when music got an attitude and image that spawned the D.I.Y. punk ethic.

Then in 1987, a band from Seattle did it again. They took their influences and made something new and exciting. In between these pivotal points in musical history, we have other bands who tried to emulate the sound these inspirational artists had created and unfortunately (or fortunately) most failed and ended up as a watered down version of their peers. In fact, Nirvana probably spawned more diluted versions of themselves than any other band previously.

Thirty Years later I am listening to Fight On the new album from the aptly named Thirty Years Late. What we have is ten Alt-rock tracks with a vocalist whose voice is scarily similar to Aaron Lewis from Staind. It actually wouldn’t be hard to convince people that Fight On is actually a new Staind album!

Early songs are exactly what you would expect, angsty with an occasional catchy chorus and that vocal standing way out in front. It’s OK but as someone recently posted on their Facebook page “it sounds familiar”. The title track Fight On is the stand out track, as it is an indication of a possible direction the band could have taken to stamp their own identity on this genre. The high is short lived though as it is followed by Let You Down which is also the longest track. A pedestrian guitar riff punctuates the song that really doesn’t go anywhere and is probably about 2 mins too long.

To be fair Thirty Years Late are really good musicians and Damian Pons can really sing better than most. However, his voice is so similar to Aaron Lewis that it pigeonholes the band. I guess this is my problem, I hear a band who are really good at what they do. They could do so much more if they stepped away from their influences and added to them to create their own sound.

They do it well, these songs are well crafted and I think if Thirty Years Late could remove themselves partly from their influences and add some more variation to the style and direction of their music they could actually be something special. The talent is there, they just need the will to be weird, the will to experiment, the push to be innovators and not emulators. In 1967 people did that, in 1977, 1987…. Thirty years might not be too late to change again. Let’s see what happens next.

_{Review written by Paul Goddard}