I am firmly of the belief that of all the languages in the world, Italian lends itself more perfectly to punk/hardcore than most others. It has that choppy, edgy quality that just seems to allow words to be spat out and have a life of their own, regardless of whether I can understand a single thing they are going on about. Hence, I was more than open to listening to Alfatec given that the group is, indeed, an Italian band.

However, on looking at the CD, it was clear to see that more than half of the song titles were in English and in the booklet the lyrics were also predominantly English. What made it worse was that the lyrics were of the straightforward variety, but the actual English used was not very good. It had me scratching my head more than once as I tried to appreciate exactly what was intended to be said. I was also worried by one particular song title, "Sexy Party Tonight," but this turns out to be an attack on Silvio Berlusconi, a man whose picture should be found under the words "corrupt" and "reprehensible" in the dictionary, so hats off to the band for attacking such an unlikeable man.

Musically, this has a guitar sound that occasionally brings to mind "Destroyer" era Toxic Reasons, which is a good thing, but it doesn't really pack the punch that that U.S. trio/foursome had. The music is further let down by what can only be described as a flaccid floor tom sound that is frequently evident in the songs. I'm not a musician and certainly have no understanding of tuning drums but you have to listen to this to hear how bad the floor tom is: it just takes away some of the positives that I do find when listening to this release.

Those positives are to be found when the band sings in its native language--the songs have a bit more of an edge to them with the staccato delivery of the lyrics, and really this is where the band could do itself some favors by concentrating on writing material in a more familiar language.