Handheld – Handheld

Sometimes gets to a point where you need an extra little push before you actually go out of your way to listen to a band. I don’t know why, but I needed that for Handheld. Luckily for me, that push came rather quickly; it came in form of an quote describing the band and not only was it a rather positive mini review but it also came from a pretty reliable source. You see, I got an e-mail and splattered across the top in big, bold letters was “Bridging the gap between Millencolin and Face To Face” – Belvedere/This Is A Standoff‘s Steve Rawles.

There we go. A well known skate punk singer comparing this Canadian foursome to two other great skate punk bands – yeah, it got me interested and that was the push I needed to really get into Handheld. And quite frankly, Rawles was right. Handheld‘s newest album does have them bridging the gap between Millencolin and Face To Face but that’s only the beginning. While it may be true that they never leave their comfort zone of quick skate punk (except for on two occasions, but more on that later) they do pull influences from many sides of the style. From Strung Out to This Is A Standoff themselves, Handheldhits the melodic skate punk style with a sense of urgency and speed.

With fast guitar riffs, pounding drums, and vocals alternating between melodic gang vocals and being spat out at the same speed of A Wilhelm Scream‘s Nuno Pereira, Handheld doesn’t offer much in the area of diversity but more than compensates with energy that lasts throughout it all. The two minute anthem Countless Hours continually stands out with its pulsating bass drum, intro akin to Only Crime and a growing chorus that gets you singing along instantly. Push The Trends see the band focusing more on a shared vocal duties and a heavy rhythm section. More Than Receding is the band’s comical release about going bald while other tracks, like Can We Go On, have a more serious nature to them. It is, for the most part, a straight forward skate punk album from start to finish.

As I said before, there’s only really two deviations from the standard skate punk flare. The first is on Take Two, which starts off with thick bass line and sounds almost like the introduction to a ska song before they bring in the skate punk brigade and the second is the badly placed acoustic number – Awaiting – that suffers mostly from it’s horrible placement. It follows the very strong Disassociate that uses mostly gang vocals for the final minute of the song. But it then uses that ultra cheesy fade out effect that has the chorus being repeated over and over again as it slowly becomes softer and fades out. Once it does finally fade out completely, the album feels done and there’s an awkward twenty seconds of silence before the acoustic track kicks in. Awaiting is not a bad song per say but feels extremely out of place in the album. The vocals aren’t as strong and it ruins the flow of the album in a way – particularly since they pump it back up afterwards with one final closing track. The track just fills out of place and hinders the final minutes of the album.

Still, Handheld have delivered us a entertaining and energizing release. With sixteen songs it can feel a bit long but skate punk fans will love it anyway.