Fiction Reform – Revelation in the Palms of the Weak

With a cover that looks strikingly similar to a cross between Polar Bear Club’s Sometimes Things Disappear and their Summer of George EP, a first look of Fiction Reform’s Revelation In The Palms of the Weak may give you the impression that you’re about to hear a post-hardcore band but you’d be very wrong. Instead this Southern California quartet – with members from This Is My Empire, Bullet Treatment, Aerodrone and Civet – play a powerful brand of punk rock that sounds like a trip back through memory lane.

Revelation’s no holds-barred attitude sounds like classic Offspring with Brody Dalle of The Distillers up front. Yeah, you can pull in the easy Civet comparison, or even a non-horror based Thee Merry Widows reference, and you wouldn’t be far off but Fiction Reform seem to push the foundations one step further than just being a simple Distillers knock-off.  This is a rebellious effort, like The Runawayswith a bit more of a crunch to them, and with just enough a raw pop-punk sound akin to the punk explosion of ’94 to get you singing along with a song about Hitler (Mr. Eva Braun) before you even notice.

There’s some blistering guitar solos – like the opening riff of Whites In Their Eyes – blood pumping drum beats – see Sins of the Father – and a constantly up-tempo, dirty punk rock feel to it. Halfway through the album, Fiction Reform throw a curve ball into the mix with the airy and light Come Back Home which sounds like The Yeah Yeah Yeahs; and while the slow acoustic number has the potential to derail the album, the abrupt change saves it from becoming too repetitive and stops it from falling into the background.

It’s a raspy, fast paced punk album with a strong female vocalist and street-punk tendencies that would’ve been huge a few years ago but will now just have to be content to build a small, but passionate, underground fan base.