Shockwave

I can never fault a band for having a good time, but I can hope that they sound good doing it. Shockwave plays typical mosh-centric, metal influenced hardcore. That's nothing out of the ordinary. What is out of the ordinary is the agenda that the band is pushing. Now, when you think of this style of music and you think of agendas, what's the first thing that pops into your head? You'd probably think of straight edge, or shit, but mostly straight edge. But no, that's not what Shockwave is pushing, their underlying message is rather simple: we watched a lot of episodes of "Transformers" as kids, now we're going to write songs about blowing stuff up and destroying things.

I'm glad these guys aren't taking themselves too seriously, because humor is something that music like this sorely lacks. However, once the initial amusement is gone, there's not much to bring you back for repeated listens. I knew what I was getting into, I expected lots of breakdowns, lots of soundclips, and lots of references to robots. For the most part, that is what I got, but the songs didn't grab me, not even in the "mosh for the sake of moshing" kind of way. These songs just aren't as much fun as I thought they would be, aside from the great intro. I was expecting Shockwave to play by the book, but I guess I was hoping they'd make things more interesting. I wanted to like this, but it really never held my attention.

In the end, this is good for one or two listens, simply because of the novelty factor. But after a while, that wears off, and you're left with a rather mediocre release. I applaud Shockwave for bringing a sense of humor to an often humorless genre, but I wish their execution was a little better. This might be worth a listen, if only for the subject matter. But beyond that, there's nothing here that you can't listen to on a thousand other albums.