Review by Karen Anderson
After
listening for the first time to Common Enemy’s Outsiders I really did not want to listen to it again. In fact I wanted to turn
it off a couple of seconds after it started. The songs all pretty much
sound the same and I kept tuning the music out all together out of boredom
and annoyance. This is an old CD though and they have since then changed
their vocalist and bass player, so hopefully this hardcore punk band is
better now. Hopefully a lot better.
The singing is so bad that I’m having trouble describing it. It’s
a horrible bunch of noise and the words are pretty much unrecognizable.
It reminds me of when my friend got his tooth pulled and was so drugged
up that he couldn’t move his face properly, let alone form words.
Ian’s voice is extremely annoying and somewhat high pitched.
I do like the messages they’re trying to send with the lyrics though.
You know, don’t do drugs, conformity is dumb, and uh …listen
to more than UK punk bands. Common Enemy is also pretty anti-religious
with songs like “Nihilistic”, “Weaned on Lies”,
“Assimilate”, and “Prayer for Profit” which is
about greedy T.V. Evangelists. Their lyrics are disappointingly simple.
The instrumentals are actually not that bad, but still could be better.
They can be pretty simple and repetitive. The drums are very fast and
chaotic. They are completely separated from the rest of the music at times
giving the songs a disjoined, disorganized feeling. The guitar stays pretty
simple too, but Justin shows off his talent with some short, but great
riffs like in the middle of “Nihilistic”. The bass guitar
I really can’t say much about. It's simple, starts off many of the
songs, and a lot of the time the bass and the guitar will play the same
thing. I do like however, how the guitar and the bass can play in unison
like in “Drug Culture” or in “Laugh and Grow Fat”.
The guitar and the drums also work nicely together in “British Invasion”.