Everything I get in for review goes through the same process. The first thing I do after I greedily rip into the manila envelope like a kid on Christmas is check out the layout. You can tell a lot just from a cover of a CD. Usually if the cover depicts a scene of armored knights upon horseback fending off a plethora of orcs, hobgoblins, and goblins I can make a healthy bet that the band is going to be on the metal tip. If the CD has some band on stage being mobbed by kids in basketball shorts and entitled We are in this Together or Make the Shot I know its more youth crew to deal with. If the layout has some girl crying bloody tears or any sort of references to angel wings or razorblades it usually goes in the trashcan. Martyr Brigade fortunately utilizes simple yet effective pictures of Depression-era children going to school and playing Ring Around the Rosie. Apparently these photos were given to the members of Thieves and Assassins by their families. It adds a nice personal touch which makes Martyr Brigade stand out from the heaps of Dungeon Master Guide imagery and faux suicidal urges.
The next thing I do is listen to the music. I even dig the bloody emo crap out of the wastebasket to give it its fair shot. With Martyr Brigade I certainly was not expecting rusty old folk songs about dustbowls and soup lines. However I wasn't expecting a band from Long Island, New York making me want to dust off my copy of Full Circle and give Pennywise a nostalgic listen. Thieves and Assassins singer, Duncan MacDougal, is such a dead ringer for Pennywise's Jim Lindberg I expected to hear a cover of "Bro Hymn" to end the CD or at least a reference to "Same Old Story."
Musically, Thieves and Assassins may be in the same ballpark as Pennywise or any other band that filled the roster in the mid-90's for Epitaph, if you lump all your speedy melodic punk/hardcore bands together. In all reality the only Epitaph band that Thieves and Assassins remotely resembles is Insted. Thieves and Assassins draw their influences more from East Coast idols like Dag Nasty and Lifetime than they do Bad Religion or The Offspring. So yes, Martyr Brigade is yet another solid melodic hardcore album coming from Long Island whose cup has run over with solid melodic hardcore bands since the early part of this century.
When it comes to music I like, Thieves and Assassins fit the bill nicely. They have a decent layout while playing fast catchy melodic hardcore with thoughtful lyrics that always remind the listener that the political should always be personal and vice versa. Martyr Brigade is yet another good album from a good band that happens to be from, once again, Long Island. As long as Long Island keeps cranking these bands out I'll keep asking for them for review and it enjoying it the whole way through.
