Imagine a punk band influenced by Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Damned, The Ramones, Sex Pistols, Stranglers, UK Subs and X-Ray Specs. Now Imagine swapping out the electric guitars for ukuleles … that’s the kind of band I’m reviewing.
Uke Punk is a 4 piece band from North West Lancashire, UK. This band formed around July 2009 and put out their first album “Punk Police” on the 1st of October 2014. They released a 4 track EP called “From The North” on the 31st of January 2018 followed by the single “Susie Dent” on the 17th of May 2018. Now that you’re all caught up on the bands discography lets talk about the latest release.
Uke Punk released their second album “I Blame The Parents” on the 1st of May 2019 via bandcamp. It features 12 new tracks from the band that stick to their unique sound.
The music has energy and melody but also feels like simplistic song writing elements like 4 chord songs. The singing style is fairly similar to those bands named at the top of this piece as influences.The lyrical content is exactly what you’d expect with the band pointing out some of the stupidity in society like on the track “Watch Out (The Daily Fail Song)” where the band has a dig at the stories and headlines used by the daily mail to fire people up and sell newspapers.
The opening track “Blame The Parents” has all the energy of a punk rock song with a simple chord structure and singing style, it even has some Oi! and small leady highlights from the ukulele.
Another great track was “Eat The Rich” with its fast paced drum and ukulele intro. I love the lyrics to this one, from the first line “I’m gonna change the world” it had me hooked and is definitely my favourite track on the album.
“The New Sherrif” has a noise punk intro before turning into a cool ska punk type song minus the horn section and its probably worth mentioning that “Susie Dent 2” has the obligatory na na nahs found amongst the pop punk world.
Overall this album was as enjoyable or more enjoyable than the bands first album and they have lost none of their spark.
Uke Punk is Paulus Device – vocals/ukes Andy Moore – bass/vocals Glenn Jackson – keys/vocals Luke Taylor – percussion
Uke Punk Bandcamp
Uke Punk Facebook – Uke punk Youtube
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