Cobra Skull's American Rubicon

Now onto another of today's many releases, Cobra Skull's American Rubicon. I first heard about this band when I was hopping around different band websites looking for tour dates. One of the Lawrence Arms members had written a post about how their recently released debut cd Sitting Army was one of the best punk albums he'd heard in years. I told the singer of Cobra Skulls about my means of discovering them later when I saw them open for Against Me (on this same note I take credit for the fact that Rubicon doesn't have Cobra in every song title as I encouraged him to end that joke now before it got out of hand) and he sounded shocked that Lawrence Arms even knew who they were. They seem to regularly be surprised at things like this, but the attention they continually get is well deserved.

I had words like 'fresh' and 'original' written in my notes for this post, but before my second play through ended I thought of something. I don't think that the appeal of Cobra Skulls is in originality, but more in extremely well crafted songs. A lot of Rubicon has familiar sounds that I can't quite put my finger on, but one that I have is the songs 'Rebel Fate' and 'Thicker Than Water' that remind me a lot of earlier Green Day. It's probably their ability to take the best parts of punk from over the years and make their sound out of them that puts these guys above the rest of the stuff out there, but the occasional inclusion of spanish lyrics helps them stick out as well.

Every year a giant pile of new punk bands emerge, but I just can't get into any of them like I did when I was in high school. As my musical tastes mature I tend to only follow the punk bands that I listened to in my youth. There's some magical formula to Cobra Skulls however that has hooked me. American Rubicon isn't entirely the evolutionary jump that I was hoping for from them, but its still an excellently crafted album that I'm thoroughly enjoying, and I'm looking forward to hearing what they come up with next.