Suede Razor’s All the Hits and Misses has got to be one of the best straight up rock and roll albums of 2018. The San Francisco Bay area band has an impressive pedigree, being made up of established punk rockers from bands like Harrington Saints, Hounds & Harlots and Sydney Ducks. For Suede Razors, they take a more retro approach. You’ll hear bits of early punk, oi, mod, glam, and even classic rock. Some of the riffs and melodies would be right at home on a KISS or AC/DC record. Try imagining Bob Seger fronting The Business, or something like that.
All the Hits and Misses is not really an album in the truest sense. It’s actually a collection of everything the band has done to this point. It includes all five of their two song seven inch singles, as well as their six song mini LP, Razor Stomp. Pirate’s Press Records has done the world a great service by compiling all these songs in one place. The 16 tracks flow like an LP, and thankfully this doesn’t have the disjointed feeling of a lot of comps.
The topics covered on All the Hits and Misses are mostly throwbacks too. It’s actually sort of refreshing to escape today’s highly charged political climate for 45 minutes. It’s jammed packed with songs about men doing manly stuff and trying to impress the fairer sex. Highlights? There are many. “Longshot Kid”, “My City”, “Boy’s Night Out”, “Wish the Lads Were Here”, “No Time For You”, “Berlin or Bust” and “All Nighter” will all get stuck in your head. Every song has melodic guitar leads, catchy sing along choruses and flat out rock and roll swagger.
Suede Razors are for fans of bands like Social Distortion, Cock Sparrer, The Who, The Jam and New Bomb Turks. They’re a band that you could listen to with your skinhead friends, and also with your uncle who drinks beer in his garage jamming out to Bachman Turner Overdrive. In 2018, rock and roll is in pretty bad shape. The kids are listening to rap, EDM, bro country and various other crap. Among the younger generation, rock and roll listening and record buying is at an all time low. If the genre needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, Suede Razors would be a good place e to start.