The Living End

Author: Melissa Ryan

The Living End
The Living End
(EMI)

The rise of Melbourne trio the Living End in the past two years has been meteoric, and this album knocked Cold Chisel off top spot in the charts to debut at number one. It opens with a familiar explosion, as Prisoner of Society has been well and truly adopted as yet another anthem of the disaffected, with its opening lines: “Well, we don’t need no one to tell us what to do.” With heavy doses of late 1970s British punk, some very Green Day-esque rock and singer Chris Cheney’s often cynical lyrics, this album revels in the rough edges. A highlight is the simple, catchy chorus of Growing Up (Falling Down), a song about learning from life’s blunders. The reggae-ska of Trapped with its horns and boppy beat allows Cheney’s voice to mellow for a moment, and the style changes to pop-rock on the energetic Save the Day. A fast fusion of many easy-to-spot influences. The Living End make an energetic start, but the repetitive style blurs the 14 songs, especially near the end.

Rock

Author: Shaun Carney

THE LIVING END
The Living End
Modular/EMI

YOU have to hand it to Melbourne trio The Living End for its capacity to put together an album’s worth of material on its self-titled debut. Essentially, the sort of post-punk musical territory in which The Living End operates is, as the band’s US counterpart Green Day has shown, an exercise in which three pots are being cooked on a twa-burner stove. There’s a fast approach, there’s loud/quiet/loud approach, there’s a pop approach. To their credit, Chris Cheney, Scott Owen and Trav Demsey know enough about their oeuvre to mix and match in order to sustain interest over 47 minutes. Cheney’s unrestrained vocal style is particularly good on the less punky tracks such as the swamp rocker Bloody Mary and the poppy Growing Up (Falling Down). Saleswise, this is one of Australia’s biggest contemporary bands. This promising effort will do well and enough skill is on show to suggest that, like other angry punk acts such as the Clash and Green Day. The Living End will add to its stylistic armory in the future.