Only Crime – To The Nines

While Only Crime‘s music speaks for itself, everyone must first understand what the band is made from. The five piece band is composed of some of today’s finest punk rock players. On vocals they have Russ Rankin of Good Riddance, on drums they have Bill Stevenson of The Descendents, All, and Black Flag (he also produced, engineered, mixed and mastered the album), on one guitar they have Aaron Dalbec of Bane and Converge, on the other guitar we have Zach Blair from Hagfish and his brother Donivan (from Hagfish also) on bass. So just looking at the list of names, you know you can expect to hear a good CD, and that is what you get.

Cutting straight to the chase: if you like Good Riddance, you will like Only Crime. Russ Rankin’s vocals are still the same and that reminds you immediately of his main band. The songs are constructed using a melodic hard-core format. Merging great breakdowns, amazing guitar riffs, and melodious vocals. Lyrically, you get what you expect to get from Mr. Rankin. Somewhat political, very direct, and very well written. Take Pray For Me for example with lyrics like “I’m not the one to bear this pain, and share the sin yet still refrain. In token words and spoken lies, we spit inside your pious eyes” or maybe The Well‘s final verse “And I don’t understand, There’s no sense inside, Obsessed with ourselves, we fall short and subside”. The two best songs on the album have to be the final two, On Time and Fallen Idols; largely due to the vocal harmonies. The songs, which lean a bit towards the harder metal influence, have such great vocal harmonies that they just grab you right away.

Only Crime‘s To The Nines is for any Good Riddance fan. Fans of more poppy, softer music will probably want to steer away from it though.