As one of the final releases from Wrigleyville-based pop-punk kingpins Red Scare, I want to like VULTURES UNITED more than I actually do. The RIYL is THE BRONX, but that same swagger doesn’t really come through. I want to like the lyrics, but they’re not fully developed, or there’s points that seem, for lack of a better word, obvious.

Take track 2, “The Joy Divisions.” It’s a song about the Jewish women forced to prostitute in Nazi camps. It’s not news and it’s not surprising. Thanks to the band formerly called WARSAW (JOY DIVISION), the term enjoys currency. Which, again, it’s good that someone’s willing to bring it up, but the topic is one that’s been covered already (This lyrical logic would basically end the genre known as hardcore – Ed.).

That point, I think, encompasses my feelings about the record. It’s overall okay and its heart is seemingly in the right place (as seen by the explanations under the lyrics and the song to their girlfriends, “Salon Girls”) but Savages feels otherwise unremarkable. Yes, it rocks in spots (see “The Natives” and “Fine Night For An Exorcism”) but it doesn’t quite coalesce. Think a less discerning SUICIDE FILE and you’re more or less there. Unlike the Indecision band, it feels like VULTURES UNITED doesn’t quite know where to dig to find the gems. And when it sounds like the band has found comfort in something, the articulation is rough. “Haunted Houses In the City of Fountains” is about the foreclosure crisis and banking failures, but the chorus is about people with “big fucking knives in their backs.” Sigh.

Musically, it’s all noisy, charging guitar mayhem like THE BRONX and SUICIDE FILE, with aesthetic marching orders from PROPAGANDHI. The album art, though, has a neat little trick. There’s an image in grey hidden behind the lyrics, so if you look past the written words, you can see the images of Victorian sexism and violence, Nazi youth and another image that looks like a dude about to stab another dude with a knife. Anyway. It’s a thoughtful little meta-textual thing that someone ought to be congratulated for.

Savages doesn’t compel me to come back. There are moments of glory for the band, but too much static in between is a drain on my attention.

Red Scare