EP Review: Erica Drive – The Hate, The Hurt, The Healing

Erica Drive have been been around for a few short years, originally formed by the nucleus of Matt Underdown and Frank Harding their ranks have steadily swollen, culminating in Erica Drive becoming a five piece ahead of recording their sophomore EP, The Hate, The Hurt, The Healing, that follows on from their self titled debut EP that was released in 2017. The Hate, The Hurt, The Healing is set to be released via all major digital retailers on the 12th March.

The opening chords of All We Are dip deep into classic pop punk, the tracks swells and ebbs in intensity and is suitably accompanied by the angst ridden lyrics that you’d expect to accompany this kind of emotional ‘heart on the sleeve’ release, Better Man continues with the alternate verse and chorus approach with intense sections of the track giving way to their gentler poppier approach. Anchor, a track that wasn’t revealed ahead of the release of The Hate, The Hurt, The Healing, is the EP’s highlight, they still retain their melodic emotional poppy punkiness but it’s more driven and muscular. Finally we get The Fall, if anyone is surprised that this four track EP closes with a slow burning lighter waving emotional finale hasn’t read their copy of the pop punk handbook properly.

The Hate, The Hurt, The Healing comes across a cathartic EP, although it must be said that the EP’s title is fairly obvious hint at this. I get the impression that Erica Drive are a name that is torn over which direction they want to head in, there is an obvious and very evident pop punk core to The Hate, The Hurt, The Healing but it also breaks out into moments of anthemic alt rock and grittier tougher sounding punk rock, and it’s these elements that to some degree elevates them above many of the vast herds of pop punk bands that are currently stampeding across the UK.

Erica Drive can be found on Facebook, Spotify, Twitter and YouTube