Olympia: Emergencies

With track titles like “Circus! Circus! Circus!” and “Lo, My Name Is Abhorred”, Olympia’s Emergencies could be the kinda record that is having a go at the rock industry, at corporate ignorance in general. Subsequently, it’s the right-sounding album to do just that: rough pop-punk throttled back to a verse-chorus mold, full of not particularly tuneful shouting, heaps of distortion and general all-out rocking. “I’m going to bring the night to this party… Are you ready to go?” their vocalist slurs on “M-80”. The thing is, with track titles like “This Ship Won’t Sink Itself” and “It’s Okay to Eat the Dead (Times Are Tough)”, you might also have to convince yourself that Olympia are not, by nature, an overly pessimistic band. It’s really down to whether you enjoy a bunch of punks poking fun at your expense. It is hard not to enjoy it every once in a while, but then again, is it saying something about an album when the best track is called “Olympia Is a Motherfucker”?