Dead Mechanical - A Great Lie

Dead Mechanical - A Great Lie
Sex Cells Records

Due to conflicting schedules and bad luck, I've missed Dead Mechanical twice in Philadelphia this year. It's unfortunate, because I really enjoyed last year's Medium Noise. There was a gruff catchiness that was the exact style of pop punk that I eat up. There were some nice guitar riffs and exciting sing-a-longs that I found myself humming over and over.

This year's A Great Lie 7" is no different. The opening title track calls to mind early Jawbreaker, with scratchy vocals and the catchy refrain of "Nothing tells like a great lie, nothing ends like a good time, no body leaves like you will tonight" There's a very East Bay updated for 2008 style that is right up my alley. They're only a three piece, but the bass has a solid full sound, and there are multiple guitar parts that are never super complicated, but complement each other well and give this a nice bit of melody. "Sidewalks" is a faster song with slightly less gruff vocals, and as a whole, it's a much more straightforward approach to a pop punk song. Along with that, it's much shorter, and breezes by before you get bored by the simplistic structure. The 7" ends with the shortest song, "Bitter Drinks," has a little bit of a darker sound to it, with nice drumming that accentuates the Jawbreaker/Crimpshrine-ish vocals nicely, especially when it sort of drops out during the verses.

I've heard that they're working on an LP, which would be excellent, as both their EP and 7" have been strongly catchy, scratchy affairs that work to fill that hole in my heart left by Jawbreaker and East Bay bands that I grew up listening to. Dead Mechanical does a nice job making sure that they don't fall into a rut and put their own original spin on a genre that can sound dated if not done correctly.