This is a first for The Superficial Gallery, I think; we were contacted by a record label to check out one of their acts*. In this case, Sarathan Records asked me to check out the artist War Tapes. I am going into this one completely blind, as I have never heard of them before. These are my first impressions of the Seattle-based post-punk band.

War Tapes reminds me a lot of She Wants Revenge and Interpol. They both remind me of My Bloody Valentine, which, of course, remind me of Joy Division and Echo & the Bunny Men. This connection breeds a difficult pedigree for a band to live up to. Post-punk is a genre with a long and storied past which starts, really, with Ian Curtis’s rise and death at his own hands. War Tapes tries to mix up this formula up some by adding a bit of emo-punk a la Alkaline Trio and Bayside into everything, but this kind of falls flat and fails to impress. There isn’t really a lot here that I can get behind. This isn’t bad by any stretch, but everything has been done before and better. The single “Dreaming of You” is solid and something that I can see listening to (maybe on a mixtape), but nothing else really stands out. One thing that I would like to do, though, is to catch their current tour; I am really curious as to how these guys play off of Tiger Army, a completely different and, frankly, more interesting sound. All in all, I wouldn’t leave their show, I wouldn’t shut the record off, but I am just not really a fan. If you want to check out the record yourself here is their Facebook.

*Editor’s Note – If they had paid us I would have insisted the review be glowing…I mean we are impartial.  And poor.  Crap.