Population Four - This town will drag you down review

They Say :- Popualtion Four come from a town called preston (preston has earned that lower case p) in the Northwest of the United Kingdom. The band formed from the remains of the bands Home Made Memory and Mirrored Emotion. Daff, Cooko and Si started writing tunes in late 2007. Ceres joined soon after and when their original singer met a ruinous end wrestling a Kodak bear in the Rockies of Canada on a camping trip gone badly wrong, Rick was asked to join the band to take over vocal duties partly because they needed a new singer and partly because they needed a fat guy so they could appeal to minorities.
All five members, and yes we are aware of the inconsistency of the name, had been active participants in the music scene of preston and its satellite towns for sometime and so we had come to know one another through our different exploits over the years.

We Say :- Population Four are a 5 piece hailing from Preston in the north of England. Now this may not exactly spring to mind as a hotbed of rock music, but that may be about to change with the arrival of these guys on the scene. Since their formation from the ashes of Home Made Memory and Mirrored Emotion in 2007 the band have won two local 'battle of the bands' competitions and appeared at the Rebellion Festival, as well as putting out the '2009' E.P. in, oh, you figure it out.

This second E.P., entitled 'This Town Will Drag You Down' is the bands calling card to greater things, and it is certainly a release that shows considerable promise. The opener 'Kill Your Friends' starts off with a fairly typical 'whatever-core' intro before the vocals kick in, and this is where things start to get very interesting. Instead of the expected post-hardcore Singey / Shoutey pairing that you kind of expect you get a great raspy punk delivery from vocalist Rick. There's a passion in the vocals that I really liked and it's great to hear a band stay away from the cliche's of sing / shout / breakdown and instead do something a touch more original.

The next track 'We Know Too Much' slows the pace down a notch without watering down the intensity of the delivery. It also gives the band a chance to showcase what they are capable of musically. The 'we are not the same' anthemic refrain is destined to make it a live favorite.

'Nomads' opens with some excellent guitars reminiscent of Bad Religion, but unfortunately the temptation to slip into the sing / shout thing gets too strong for the band here, but to be fair it is better done than some manage. The last track 'This Town Will Drag You Down' continues in a similar vein.

For me, this was very much release of two halves. The first two tracks kind of defy your expectations in a very good way, whereas the last two are very well executed examples of a very well worn genre.

Population Four have released a very good E.P. that I am sure will be lapped up by the Warped tour generation and they deserve to be very successful, And in 'Kill Your Friends' and 'We Know Too Much' there are hints of something with a much wider appeal.

Dizzy

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