Love Equals Death - Nightmerica
Label: Fat Wreck Chords
Release Date: 03/21/2006
http://www.altsounds.com/loveequalsdeath

I love this band! I love this band because they remind me of how great pop punk was right before Blink 182 got ahold of it. Nightmerica is the debut full-length from Love Equals Death, one of the newest additions to the Fat Wreck lineup. It’s a blend of AFI, Alkaline Trio and even some NOFX. It’s not all that surprising that Love Equals Death have managed to capture pre-taint pop punk as they contain Tsunami Bomb bassist Dominic Davi and former Loose Change frontman Chon Travis. I am glad to hear they opted for ‘keeping it real.’

While the album art may be somewhat misleading (so eerie!), the music contained within more than makes up for it, tapping into what made this genre so ****ing great in the first place. Fat Wreck Chords is the perfect home for this band, evident in influences from nearly every other band on their roster popping into this album at one point or another. Nightmerica is wonderfully melodic leaning toward hardcore with just the right amount of shouts and chants to keep it rooted deep it punk. The final track on the album ‘Truth Has Failed’ is a beautiful acoustic ballad which sounds COMPLETELY out of place on the record, but is on its own, a great tune. With any luck this is meant to show a bit of their diversity, but it ends the album with a gigantic question mark, leaving the listener curious about what’s to come next for the band. Potentially a brilliant move on their part