Teenage Rehab – Break Yourself

Kentucky punk rock trio Teenage Rehab are back with Break Yourself, a 4 track 7” which represents their first new material since their Abuse Your Solution EP back in 2010. The band are a welcome throwback to stripped down, angry street punk with a strong sense of melody and the four tracks here certainly don’t deviate from that formula.

Dirty dog evokes comparisons to Swedish rock gods The Hellacopters combined with a slice of Belfast street punks Stiff Little Fingers for good measure. Cue guitar slides and whiskey soaked vocals. Use of voice distortion is well placed and doesn’t sound forced, nothing complex but a seriously fun listen. Property offers Motorhead-esque, riffage bordering on thrash but I am totally down with that. Fast, furious, angry and pretty bloody awesome. If those shitty Fast and the Furious movies would have used music like this as their soundtrack, they would be infinitely better immediately. You don’t own me sounds honest and brutal…and you certainly don’t want to argue.

Rewind – classic 70’s punk rock whoah-oh’s matched with viotriolic vocals wrapped up so that it kind of sounds like every other band of the genre, but just not quite. It’s good, if a little generic and ends up feeling much below the benchmark set by the opening two tracks.  Southside Poverty changes up the tempo, incorporating reggae style riffs, and leads us into a tale of squalor, poverty, addiction and references about every other vice you can think of.

If this wasn’t a band who make music for no other reason than because they love it, it may sound a little pretentious and patronising, but these guys are the real deal and the stuff they write about is  shit they know and live. It may not be ground breaking, but it is real – and when you package that up in a 2 minute blast of angry punk energy, it just fucking works. Teenage Rehab are a reminder of what punk rock was, and still is, about.