No Good Reason is for, lack of a better description, a melodic hardcore band from Almada, Portugal. They sound female-fronted, but upon closer inspection of their MySpace page, it would seem that they're all male. Maybe they're just young?

That would be one explanation for the high-pitched shouts, but the second song on the record is "College", a look back at "Four years gone / And I'm glad I used this time to multiply." Adding to the confusion is that Side A plays at 45 RPM, while Side B plays at 33 RPM. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It's not a huge deal, but I've never run across it.

The record begins with a nice hardcore guitar riff complemented with good tone and a rolling rhythm of kicks and snares. The vocals are distorted (and high-pitched, as previously exhausted), but the melodies are fairly good and the opener "Monument" is concise enough to work. The aforementioned "College" follows with more of the pleasant melodic hardcore guitar introduced in the first song, but lacking a real engaging melody to match it.

Side B (which is pretty amusing if you don't flip it to 33 RPM) starts off with "Tuesdays = Nowhere", which may be the highlight of the 7-inch, with some of the best music and lyrics on the record: "Our lives / We've been growing up with values that are not our own / We stand alone." It rounds out with some stellar guitar playing that punches into the driving rhythms perfectly. The closing title track is also pretty good-albeit a bit drawn out-but making the "B-sides" better than what's on Side A.

Far Away is a bit of a grower. Once you figure out what's going on with this band and their wacky record speeds, No Good Reason shows that they're capable of some pretty good stuff here.