Music Review: Useless ID's Symptoms

Symptoms is Israeli punk band Useless ID's eighth full length...and it shows. They know what they're doing, and they've gotten pretty good at doing it. I like it quite a bit, but there's still something about it that nags at me, and it's probably completely in my own head.

The record is chock-full of extremely well-formed songs. The music isn't particularly ground-breaking or unique, but it doesn't really need to be. Pretty much every track on the album is brilliantly structured. There aren't any lulls in the entire thing; the momentum just pulls you straight through to the end. Plus, almost every song has numerous little cool moments that help punctuate them, be it an awesome drum fill, a killer riff, or a really sweet transition. Still, despite the quality song writing, I don't really see myself listening to this more than the occasional revisit every few years.

To me, it sort of falls into a category that I feel other late 90's, early 2000's punk bands (like A Wilhelm Scream, Smoke or Fire, Strike Anywhere, or Strung Out) have fallen into. It's good music and I like all of those bands, but none of them really inspire me to take it to the next level of fandom; and I think it's the production. It's expertly crafted into something that I can rock out to, but I'm probably going to forget it in an hour or so. Like I said, I like it all, and I will blast it just as loud as the rest of my music, but the glossy sheen just doesn't appeal as much to me as other aesthetics -- at least when it comes to punk.

That could very well be just my personal taste, -- in fact, it is -- but you read reviews for someone else's personal opinions on something, right? That's kind of what a review is. And while I have a lot of fun listening and rocking out to Symptoms, it doesn't take that next step for me to call it "Great". It is, however, very "Good", which explains this score:

You can purchase the album here and decide for yourself.

Full Disclosure: Fat Wreck Chords sent me a digital download of this album for this review.