The Goodnite Goodies
Fictitious CD-R
(Self-release)

The great punk rock hope of Dungun, Terengganu is back. This time more muscular, much faster, more pissed-off and yes, a hell lot more melodic!

Every single song here rocks! The Goodnite Goodies has made good of their promise made with last years’ Anti Establishment Demo EP. However the direction which I’ve liked so much, the quirky almost post-punky sound as featured on the old song Realize is no more. Not that it’s bad though.

The band has now resolved to go with the style heard previously on Visit From An Old Friend, which where melodic pop-punk meets old-school HC; with faster and harder tempo!

There are 6 songs here featuring relentless drumming heard on all those mid-period Fat Wreck bands mixed with Suffer-era Bad Religion and bits of that nice old-school hardcore Gorilla Biscuits yell-alongs.

And it doesn’t stop there, there’s the odd skanky reggae breakdowns, the misleading mat rock ballad intros and a vocalist that sometimes sound like that singer in Second Combat; almost high-pitched and giving it his all.

The thing about The Goodies that kinda keeps the band a bit further from others is their ability to fill up their tunes with twists and turns, a break there, a solo here and a new riff there, keeping every song fully realised instead of half-baked.

My favourite tune this time is the title track, Fictitious, it starts with a fake skanky rocky thing before changing into the low gears and rushing headlong into the familiar pop-punk-in-a-rush mode. In the middle it dropped speed into a reggae groove with a bit of spoken word. And then, twack! back into headlong rush before ending with a fine sing-along crash course. Excellent!

Complaints? Well, there’s a few bits. The drumming seems very samey after a few songs. Not much variety there. The snare also sounds too hollow, toing, toing, toing. Needs to beef it up a wee bit. At some point the guitar sounds untuned while the vocals would falter on a few songs. And yeah, the song Worse Pretend is wee bit too long, clocking at well over 5 minutes.

Overall the production is good for a totally home or jam-studio recorded project, again much brighter and crispier that the old Terengganu punk sound.

I think it’s time for the band to be dragged into a proper studio with a sympathetic engineer in tow. If I have the moolah, I would put these guys together with FSF for a smashing split-release. That should be super!

email The Goodnite Goodies or phone 012 967 0875

Snail Mail: A-7 taman sri tanjung, jln lapangan terbang, sura hujung, 23000 dungun terengganu

Do the right thing!