Title: Storyteller
Format Reviewed: MP3
Format Released: 26th February 2016
Reviewed By: Toby Walkley
Usually I begin my reviews with the opening track, but here, Nottingham pop-punks On The Open Road have done something pretty damn clever with new EP Storyteller. If you weren't watching the screen of your iTunes or iPod when listening, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the opening track Chump is seven minutes long. In fact, it's three distinct tracks, which blend together in seamless fashion. It's not just that the tracks cue well, with one guitar fading into another, but that the style and sound of the songs fit together perfectly. This isn't a new trick, but I can't remember the last time I heard it done so well.
Style-wise, the band cites blink-182 and Sum41 as huge influences and that's clear from the opening notes. We start with a heavy pop-punk sound, just like the one Sum41 distilled from their own love of Metallica, with a stomping riff and drum attack that then blends effortlessly into a classic blink style chorus, complete with Tom Delonge-inspired melodic guitar. This all happens in the first minute too, clearly signposting what we have to look forward to on the EP.
Regret Me Not continues the theme with some particularly blistering drums. I like that on all these songs, the vocals seem instantly familiar, in that they sound like the previously mentioned bands, yet they also sound distinctly English. That's something I bring up a lot when I review, and here I think it really works, highlighting the band's influences while also demonstrating just how long lasting and cross-pollinated they are.
Bedrock opens with a really nice guitar riff, and has a fantastic drum sound from an engineer's perspective. Once it drops, the heavy guitars and solid bass support the catchy lyrics perfectly. There are some nice group vocals and it's pretty much impossible to arrest your feet from stomping the floor, which is always great as long as you don't have downstairs neighbours.
Is Goodbye (I Tried) is very reminiscent of Boxcar Racer, and while blink are an obvious influence musically, the tone of the lyrics throughout this EP are much more in keeping with Tom and Travis' side project, less dick and fart, more brooding and mature.
From here we again blend seamlessly into the closing track The Worst Guy, a fast and heavy number, chock full of aggression and harmonised guitars, that brings us full circle and suggests On The Open Road will be well worth checking out live.
Deeply unpopular as this might sound, the closest analogy I can find for this EP is that it's like The Force Awakens, but for the music world. It's brilliant, it's nostalgic and it makes me feel sixteen all over again but I can't help feeling that its style and power play on my love of both blink-182 and Sum41 might be clouding my judgement and disguising something that could potentially be more hollow than it first appears.
Now I say potentially, and I mean that, because like The Force Awakens I won't be able to fully make up my mind till I can see it in the context of a set of movies, or in this case, in the context of where On The Open Road go next and what their next EP or album sounds like. I really want to see them keep their love of their heroes, but combine it with more of their own spin on things, and with the obvious display of craft and skill that's displayed on this EP I think that's just what they'll do.
For now though my hat goes off to the band. Partly because they delivered a well-constructed album that for me got the main elements of the sound just right, partly because they obviously put time into the smaller details that can often be missed, but mainly because as I get older, I enjoy anything that makes me feel younger. Nicely done chaps.
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