Crash and Burn

The Value of Mistrust (Thorp)
By Brian Varney

Upon a first listen, Crash and Burn‘s hardcore-flecked sound could probably seem to be free of regional allegiances. After all, you can walk into a rock club in any urban area or college campus on any night of the week and the chances are good that you’ll get to see a band playing some form of punk rock.

What sets Crash and Burn aside from this boring multitude is something that marks the band as a unique product of the Boston area. Four guys from any other area of the country wouldn’t bring the funky classic rock and roll flavor of hometown heroes such as Aerosmith and early J. Geils to a form that is usually so quick to distance itself from such undesirables.

Crash and Burn is different, and that’s what makes the band so good. By taking the manic energy and furious emotion of hardcore punk and melding it to rhythms that take a full awareness of the whole of rock music’s history and torque the fuck out of them, Crash and Burn create hardcore music that can be danced to in other ways besides the stupid-ass moshing and pogoing that normally happens at such rhythmically-challenged events.

The Value of Mistrust displays a more blatant hardcore edge than predecessor Sick Again; it’s a faster, angrier record, but damned if they don’t still play in the pocket. Try, if you can, to imagine a hardcore dude who grew up idolizing John Brannon singing karaoke to an Aerosmith LP spinning at 45, and you’re a lot closer to the reality of Crash and Burn than you might expect.
(www.thorprecords.com)