Castoff – Acquisition

San Diego political punk act Castoff returns with nine new doses of their punked up politics.  The band’s melodic skate-punk stamp once again leans heavily on various legacy acts circa 90’s greats like Bad Religion and Pennywise.  Preserving a steadfast, no frills pace that breaks for no one, Acquisition makes no apologies as their point the finger at corporate American greed.  Returning fans will note an increase in both intensity and production that delivers a tight DIY spirit from the get go.  

“Anytown, USA” leads the charge with the assertion that public apathy on a national scale has made us all blind partners in a for-profit rat race in which we have traded our humanity for materialistic gain.  It’s the “persistent complacency” of the masses that Castoff zeros in on – the band’s clamouring drum beats snap rapidly as if in an effort to wake citizens from the systemic propaganda-fed coma in which they sleep.  Acquisition is a very dark interpretation of the present day, the band rhetorically inquiring, “Why do we try?” (“The Stack”) with reference to a world littered with false opportunity.  Even optimistic rally cries like “Sincere Eyes” come blackened with doubt. “Can we fight back this time?” questions front man Bill H., continuing somewhat cynically as he plows onward with the line, “or will the pain and apathy we felt for too long / cause us to resign.”  Castoff adheres to the belief that working within our broken corporate system is a futile effort, and that society must first shift its values if true change ever stands to be gained.

Instrumentally, Castoff is much like their true-to-their-roots peers Pacer and Sic Waiting.  Listeners get plenty of interspersed “woahs” (“Complicated Words”), choral harmonies (“Won’t Return From”) and a tempo that just never lets up (you’ll have to make time to breathe somewhere in these hurried twenty three minutes).  A few technical flashes even point the band towards their loosely related stylistic cousins like technical champs A Wilhelm Scream (check out the killer solo closing out “Hubris of the Victorious”).  

Wielding a message worth spreading, Castoff march to the beat of a familiar drum.  When it comes right down to it, Acquisition is first and foremost a skate-punk album.  Castoff never aspires to do more than deservingly stand shoulder to shoulder with the icons that inspire them, and with Acquisition, that’s just fine.  Fans of straight-up melodic punk rock with a social conscious will get plenty out of this one.