Antillectual has been spamming punksites for the past couple of months, streaming one track of their new record once a week. To be honest based on those streams I expected a record that I would enjoy less than 'Testimony' their previous full length. Well I guess I am an old fashioned 'album guy' because hearing all the songs together has made me change my thoughts.
If you don't know who Antillectual are, they're Face To Face with the political mindset of Propaghandi and borrowing the acoustic guitar from Tom Against Me! once in a while. Or you could say they're a bunch of Dutch leftwing punks who listen to nineties skatepunk, contemporary emo and sometimes grow a beard to appeal to the recent orgcore crowd.
Today the Obama government has lost a lot of votes to teadrinking, conservative, crazy Republican candidates. You kind of wish everyone of those voters who made this happen received 'Start From Scratch!'. Antillectual seems to cover part of the election topics being the crisis ('Every Crisis Is A Moral Crisis') and the fact that the US is not longer the superpower it used to be ('Chinese Takeover').
I do doubt if conservative Americans would like to hear a catcy song about America as a negative role model ('America's Worst Role Model') and that eating meat isn't all that good ('Some Of My Best Friends Are Meat Eaters'). Well I guess the band would be missing their reason to exist if they didn't fuel the left wing fire here and there.
'Start From Scratch!' is the most melodic Antillectual record to date. The band tended to get lost in their own music on previous releases thus making their songs less catchy than they could have been. This time however the band has succeeded in writing a record that balances their political views with enjoyable punksongs. The additions of guestvocalist like Chris Hannah from Propaghandi doesn't add that much to the song ('Out The Ground From Under Our Feet') but it's cool for any band to have a person they are inspired by cooperate on a track. Then again the extra vocals from the lesser known Heleen from Midnight Menace ('Buyer's Remorse' and 'So Much More') do add that extra flavour.
This record is a new highlight for the Dutch punkscene and together with The Real Danger they are the leading force not only in The Netherlands but in the whole of Europe. Both bands are as good as any of the bigger US bands.
'Start From Scratch' can be downloaded from music.antillectual.com but I suggest you head over to the Shield store because the artwork is amazing enough to get the 'real' thing.
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