Various Artists – State Of Emergency: Rising Stars 2

This is what I would to do some day. Liam Thomson, the owner and webmaster of StateOfEmergency.net has gathered some of the world’s most talented and least known bands and compiled them all into one neat CD. He’s taken bands from all over the world, six countries and three continents, who play all sorts of different genres and sorted them into three category: The first is Pumped, to get you energized and ready to rock, the second is Slumped, for the laid back with chilled out music, and the third is Dumped, music for the broken hearted.

I know what you’re thinking though: “you just said it was lots of different genres! How does that work?” Well, surprisingly well in fact. Most of the songs are leaning towards the punk/acoustic/ska sound, there is some major exceptions. There’s some hip-hop, some indie rock, some metal, reggae and even some techno smashed in here. So there’s definitely something for everyone here. But even with all these changes, it still seems to flow fairly well. Yeah, there’s the occasional song you’ll have to skip over (for me,it’s Ordinary K‘s Naked), but for the most part, it doesn’t really seem to stand out For instance, you barely seem to notice the transition from the heavy rock song by The Mediam (God Is A Communist) to the hip-hop song by Fredalba (Leaders Of The Wasteland). Both those songs seem to be some of the standouts on the album even with the vast contrast.

But nonetheless, the best songs on it still come in the form of good old punk and ska. Like the very Planet Smashers-esque Makin’ Bacon by Issue Ten or the fast skate punk song Heck Of A Guy by Dead 50’s. Metal fans will be thrilled to hear Hypnogaja‘s They Don’t Care while the emo fans can wipe away their tears while listening to D-Sailors or Sevenstar.

Chances are that you’ve never heard of any of these bands before in your life, but that’s the point of the compilation. For only the price of postage, you can have this varied compilation in your mail box in no time. It’s not for anyone with a short tolerance for music genres, but if you’re open minded, then you are sure to find some bands here that you’ll like. Thomson did a good job.