The Futureheads
The Chaos

Is punk dead? If you ask the Futureheads, they will tell you that it is even buried. But that's no reason to leave the desire to have fun along with the guitars in their cases.

It takes a lot to discover a band on the fourth album, especially if they are called Futureheads, but since their apparently dazzling debut in 2004, the future heads have produced very unmemorable albums.

I admit that I'm probably not the most suitable person to review an album like this, not having been inclined to punk in all its forms for a long time.

From this point of view, it's a good thing that this "The Chaos" managed to excite me. It is an album full of references to the classic punk that made history, making it evocative and distant from what could be a sound appealing to the masses.

The big names are immediately the ones that stand out as soon as we listen to this album. Behind the perfection of the arrangements, the excellent mixing work and the energy of many stop-and-goes, we find the repertoire that the guys from Sunderland listened to as kids, raised on bread and Clash.

Thus, eleven lightning punk revival shards flow by that range from the aforementioned Clash to the Damned, passing through Misfits, Ramones, and Bad Religion, up to reach melodic escapades ("Heartbeat Song").

The best episodes are those where the old blends with the profane irreverence of the Bloc Party/Libertines style: the opening title track trio, "Struck Dumb" (copied from "Fashion Zombies" by the Aquabats..) and the already mentioned "Heartbeat Song", a song the Temper Trap would play if they had mohawks, is the best way to jump around cheerfully shaking your head.

However, you'd do well to save your energy for the album's hotter tracks, respectively "This is the Life", schizophrenia in perfect Damned style, and "The Baron", the best song of the bunch where the genius of the Pixies also appears.

If this is the result of a group considered dead, I'm sorry to have to contradict the detractors, because this is a proper punk-rock album, clean, no frills, like I haven't heard in a long time.

A self-referential, self-ironic, and somewhat 'balilla' record: it doesn't care much.