I'm a bastard when it comes to writing off new bands. I almost did that with Kissing Chaos. The lead track on their five song EP starts out with a dark and respectable new-school punk sound quite akin to The Alkaline Trio but is soon interrupted with screams that immediately soured my expectations that the group would be anything more than bandwagon-hopping nu-emo. I mentally began a negative review where I was going to rant about the "state of the scene" and the "trendy kids following Thursday" and how most "screams in non-hardcore songs are going to look as dated in four years as skittering upstroke guitar does now in bands who jumped on the ska bandwagon in `97." That was the ill-conceived review I was writing. Yet upon a revealing second spin Kissing Chaos' "Enter With A Bullet" deserves none of that criticism. This is a good review... really.

Kissing Chaos have far too much actual musical promise and songwriting skill to be written off so easily. The melodic vocals on the album are quite strong and instantly remove this band from the crop of groups trying to sell the "weak singing / excessive shrieking" juxtaposition. There's a good sense of history in the songs here as well, Kissing Chaos features four members of Pop Unknown and have carried over that band's penchant for subtle new-wave influences. All this tends to give more weight to the band's melodic punk, giving it that maturity that you hear from groups like Blueline Medic or Rival Schools. The song "Communication Discontent" is easily the strong point of the disc, a spacey indie rock track comparable musically to the latest Cave In material. The record ends off with "The Power And Intent" which shows that the band hasn't strayed too far from their hardcore influences. Its nice to hear an intensely rocking track close off a disc with this much promise.

So I'll save my condescending review material for a band that truly deserves it, they seem to be everywhere nowadays so its only a matter of time before one of them shows up on my doorstep. Fortunately, Kissing Chaos isn't one of them.