Hat Trickers – The Shadow

The idea behind The Shadow fascinated me. This was, after all, a Japanese band singing in English released on a Czech record label. This combination just really helped cement the idea that punk, and music in general, is truly universal and available to everyone.

That anticipation and fascination made it possible to overlook the pointless, although slightly ominous, thirty second introduction The Fog and get into the real meat of the album with Abyss. Starting with a steady drum beat, an eerie violin soon comes in and as you hear the sound that The Hat Trickers build themselves around. It’s a fast, eerie, pop-punk/new wave combination that sounds like something from A Clockwork Orange (the cover artwork also carries that sentiment) and some of the earliest forms of punk from the late seventies’ UK scene. The songs have a pop edge to them, with vocals that carry a unique accent alongside the aforementioned violin. Showing some AFI tendencies too, The Hat Trickers fill their songs with back-up vocals of “ooooooooohhhhhh” to create a more ominous sound. All of this sounds like a slight throwback to the British punk rock invasion, and that is a good thing.

Despite all this, The Shadow still left me wanting more as it rarely, if ever, leaves any sort of lasting impression on the listener. The sound quality is, at times, subpar with the vocals being way too low in the mix. This adds a level of soft creepiness to them which suits their sound but at the same time takes away from the songs too as you are forced to truly try and exert tons of effort to pick out the vocals. Even after listening to it countless times, I would be hard pressed to remember any vocal harmony or lyric from the album. It makes the album into bearable background music but rarely anything more.

The Hat Trickers’ goth punk style has its benefits, but in the end the best thing about it is the universality of it all – and when you’re listening to a CD, you want the best thing to be the music and nothing else.