After listening to Dinosaur Pile-up’s latest album Celebrity Mansions, two things became clear. One, pop-punk is not dead. Dinosaur Pile-up has re-imagined the raucous sounds of the naughties with this Weezer-Meets-Bowling For Soup type record. And second, pop punk might as well be dead, because it stinks.
The album opener, “Thrash Metal Cassette,” is fast-paced and aggressive. The almost-metal distorted guitars sound like they are straight off the PS2 edition of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. And that was definitely a great thing back in the day, only it’s not 2001 anymore, so who is actually listening to this drivel?
“Back Foot” is a little less Tony Hawk and a little more Cage The Elephant. There are some cool riffs, some of which are a little reminiscent of Tom Morello’s contributions to Rage Against The Machine.
Things go back downhill again on “Stupid Heavy Metal Broken Hearted Loser Punk.” It brings back the nostalgia of neon leg warmers and purple netted sleeves. But that’s what Blink 182 and Sum 41 are for. It’s 2019 and Dinosaur Pile-up is putting the same old pop-punk out there. Is it not time to move on?
Despite being the titular song on the album “Celebrity Mansions” is one of the weakest songs on the album. It’s forgettable and stylistically bland. “Black Limousine”, on the other hand, is a little more Silversun Pickups or Smashing Pumpkins. It’s creative and contains actual music. It’s just a shame that the rest of the album is such a ferocious letdown.
But hey, perhaps we’re just being harsh. Perhaps we grew up and the music makes no sense to us anymore. The album indicates that the pop-punk anthems that got us through our teen years are a forgotten language. They sound childish. They sound bad.
Or maybe… just maybe… the record is made up of mediocre pop-punk tunes and Dinosaur Pile-up needs to take a step into 2019.
1.5/5
