Toms River, NJ's One Win Choice produce a type of melodic hardcore/punk I'm usually a guaranteed sucker for. Unfortunately, their first full-length, Never Suspend Disbelief isn't strong enough to overcome the fact that I feel like I've heard this before, and done much better at that.

Intentional or not, Never Suspend Disbelief sounds nearly identical to No Trigger circa The World Is Not a Stage (vocals, recording, general style). More likely it's unintentional, and just a given comparison due to coincidental influences (seemingly, Bigwig, Good Riddance and early Strike Anywhere for starters). But even if we were to give them a pass for the blatant similarities, their songwriting skills aren't nearly as promising or developed.

The songs in question are certainly capable enough, and the band's similarly strong political/social conscious is nice to hear. But with standard skatepunk tempos in tow, gravelly delivered singing in both yelled, shouted and more melodic tones and abrupt gang vocals every so often, Never Suspend Disbelief just comes off awfully cookie cutter. Any moments that seem like the band is throwing out something even remotely different are few and far between.

Never Suspend Disbelief is hard to knock completely, as it's a more than listenable entry into modern punk rock. But it's hard to ignore the fact that bands that are barely bigger than One Win Choice are already doing this in much better ways. I guess Toms River will merely go on in infamy as the town that once housed a Little League World Series champion.

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Never Suspend Disbelief at the band's Punknews.org profile page