All These Years and Nothing! - S/T Album Review

If you ever step foot into the Midwest music scene at all, you are bound to run into a familiar face or two. This is because the real Midwest scene only exists because of these few familiar faces. The times may have changed, but the faces have only aged. Band in and band out, the NWI has seen many changes but a few solid chords still get struck right when it matters. These are not just your average punk-ass chords, these are the go-fuck-yourself riffs of All These Years and Nothing. If you took all of the lyrics that Right Arm Death Threat never wrote, and all of the energy that Nowhere Bound had, and all the bands that these guys were a part of since that time, and then ashed your cigarette out on that, you would wind up with this bad ass, eleven-track punk album that finally decided to show its worthy face. Do not think of this as a re-hashing of any of those old bands or a redundant example of what has already been done. But if you do like OFF, Pennywise, Dillenger Four, and old Offspring, this one is for you. This is the time to turn a new page and to keep the hearts pumping. With tracks like "PC Load Letter", you are ensured by the lyrics that there is more to come: "Forget today. Forget this day. Tomorrow needs to get here so I can breathe. Fuck today!" Track number 10, Fly-Over States, could have been released as a single and it would have earned just as much attention as the whole album. Acting almost as an Ode to the Midwest and how, to a nation, the region can appear to be of little significance. I mean seriously, what good ever came out of Indiana? The final lines of the song sum it up:

"We don't care what is said. We follow no leaders cause we set our own trends. We're still here. We are always here."