D-Cent Jerks – Self Awareness

Self Awareness, the debut full length album from Puerto Rican pop punk band D-Cent Jerks is a bit of a tale of 2 records. On one side, there is some slick, well written ska-pop/punk in the vein of early River City Rebels, and on the other, well, it’s a bit pop-punk-by-the-numbers.

But..when this band gets it right, they really get it right. The Still Frame is outstanding, a mix of everything good about Jimmy Eat World and the River City Rebels and adding an 80’s pop twist. Great riffs and fretruns, the horns complement the melody in all the right places and the vocal from Mike Mulet is really quite impressive in telling us a familiar tale of loss.

Time of Our Lives, My Dearest Opponent, Better Days and Admit Defeat all follow a similar formula of quickfire riffs, spiky drums and horns popping up where required. The only exception to this rule being Admit Defeat which drops the horns completely and aims to highlight the band’s skate punk credentials and although Mulet’s voice doesn’t quite have the same effect here, it’s still a fun ride.

Unfortunately the high points on Self Awareness are balanced with an almost equal number of lowlights. Broken Shell, Contention, Panic State and Cops and Robbers all sound a little pedestrian. Its not even that they’re bad, it’s just when you’ve set the bar so high with a few truly outstanding songs, it is always going to be difficult to maintain that level throughout, and unfortunately D-Cent Jerks haven’t quite managed that here.

That said, the band have been really successful in taking disparate elements that could easily sound shoehorned together and crafted a number of quite impressive songs combining killer melodies, great musicianship and vocals with the odd drop of humour thrown in. Overall Self Awareness is a strong debut, and with time I have little doubt that the bands undoubted songwriting ability will become more consistent and take them very far indeed.

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