Sometimes I feel so incredibly dumb. I have a soft spot for Spanish punk bands and figured, based on the name, this could be filed as such. Sounded Spanish in my head at least. Until I came to their bandcamp, noticed this is a Canadian band and saw the band photo with four young women. I said the name out loud. Then, slowly it dawned on me, it’s “no bro”. “Oh, I said to myself “I think you just fooled yourself”. It happens more often than I would like to admit, but this was a special one.
Special also in the sense that I am happy I fooled myself like that. Otherwise I might not have checked out this band and I would have missed out on this EP. Push play and you might think “what did I get into?”. Over a solemn organ you hear a sort of gospel chant. Almost a minute in the band shows their true face and a punky power pop party pops into your living room. The usual ingredients like busy drums (the drummer took “this song needs more cowbell” to heart and deserves extra credit for that alone), throbbing bass and melodic guitars are there. The piano (and synths in other songs) adds so much energy to this song, but is still to be found more often in this genre. The extra percussion that pushes things almost over the edge energy wise are less common and really set Nobro apart from their contemporaries. Speaking of percussion, if you want to hear them in full effect, check “Get With U” where it pushes the song to the edge energy-wise.
I mentioned all the instruments by now, but have not mentioned the vocals yet. These are very fitting for this type of music. Extra credit for effortlessly (or making it sound as such) switching from softer clean vocals to near scream yelps. The lead singer is backed up by gang shouts and choruses. To top things off there's little details in the songs like the “nuh-uh, no way” in the opening track. It’s this attention to detail that makes this EP worth every second you spend with it.
Discussing the opening track I have basically told you all you need to know about the upcoming slaughter in the next tracks. The tempo may vary, but the ingredients are applied and each time to great success. This band has a knack for coming up with incredibly catchy hooks and adding small details to their songs giving them a lot of replay value.
Do I have nothing to complain about? Well, I don’t really like the semi-acoustic closing track “Life Is A Voyage”. It sounds a bit too tame after the six energy bombs the band dropped earlier. To me it feels a bit of a cold shower and I don’t like those very much.
The goal of this band? To be the most kick-ass all-female band ever. Well, this EP is a good step in succeeding. Do you need to shred some gnar, find this EP, set the volume to max and blast this as often as needed.
