J Church "The Horror of Life" (No Idea)
By Pete Mittler
Thursday. Jul 05, 11:47 AM
Not even near-death can kill this long running act.

J Church have been around a long time. They claim in the press release that The Horror of Life is pretentious, but I disagree. It's pretty straight forward and, in my opinion, extremely UNpretentious, mixing all kinds of punk, hardcore, emo, pop punk, and what we now seem to classify as "indie" (even though, with a few exceptions, real punk rock was always "indie rock"). And being on No Idea, you can pretty much assume that there's not going to be much pretentiousness.

I really like the first few songs: they remind me a little of early Husker Du at times. In fact, there are probably only two songs that I could live without (of course, I don't remember the names of them right now). Lance Hahn's lyrics are usually interesting, too. This guy's been through hell in the last few years since their last record, and he pours it all out on here, talking about his health problems and near death experience as well as other things that are probably eating at him. Unfortunately, I don't hear a lot of hooks in these songs, which is pretty much what I look for in any album. If I'm not humming along in my head afterward, then I probably won't go searching for this again. Regardless, J Church are a really good band, and I think they're certainly worth anyone's time.
www.j-church.com
www.noidearecords.com

Click here to buy this album on iTunes!

Click here to download the iTunes jukebox application for Macintosh or Windows!

Pete Mittler

Got something constructive to say? By all means, rant away. Gonna blab about something unrelated and/or talk shit? Don't expect your comment to stick around.