"Alive" - Outer Fringe
Genre: Punk Rock
Year: 2006
Label: Independant
Website: http://www.outerfringe.net

Review Rating: 8.0 / 10
Average User Rating: N/A / 10

As much as I hate MySpace I would be stupid to deny it’s potential as a great place for promotion of bands. I even, reluctantly, set up a MySpace account for Punk Worship soon after its incarnation. And I’m glad I did, if not just for hearing about Austria’s Outer Fringe – self-proclaimed Catholic Punks. I decided to give them some support and bought their CD from the website and here are my views:

From the outset, Outer Fringe are in-your-face Christians which makes a nice change from a lot of bands who prefer only to mention it when questioned. The 11-track CD has been well recorded and features a mixture of original songs, worship covers and a pretty good tribute to the Ramones. 

Opening track ‘Alone’ lulls you into a false sense of security with a nice, poppy guitar riff before assaulting your aural senses with chugging punk-rock guitars with some nice lead riffs too. The harmonies and backing vocals give it a bit of a poppy feel too but not enough to make it too sugar-coated.

The first cover is of ‘More Love, More Power’ and, again, features some nice guitar work and backing vocals and is closely followed by the old-skool-relient-k-esque track ‘Telling’ – a song about Jesus being the “friend I always need”. The two other worship songs on the CD (‘Better is One Day’ and ‘Open the Eyes of My Heart’) are both very well done and add a nice touch to the CD as a whole, reinforcing the fact that their primary aim is to Worship God with their music. 

‘Stupid Cupid’ blatantly rips off the music for MxPx’s ‘Doing Time’ which I think lets it down a bit; Possibly because I kept singing along with the original words but maybe more that they could have easily written their own tune for it as these guys are obviously quite talented in the song-writing area!

At times it’s quite difficult to pick out all the lyrics (due to both he recording/mixing and their accents) but you here occasional bits such as “The Lords has come to us, let’s give him glory” and “Hey ho! Jesus Christ’s the only way to paradise”. 

‘How I Need You’ is a nice acoustic-led song about God being the master and shepherd and the writer clearly knows how to rely on God for the help he needs. It’s not all acoustic though, just the start of it but you can hear the acoustic guitar throughout.

The CD ends with a cover of the Ramones’ ‘Blitzkreig Bop’ which is actually well executed and forms an impressive ending to an impressive CD. Outer Fringe havea  lot of potential and, by the looks of their web site, this is being realised with a lot of gigs booked around mainland Europe. Let’s hope that they decide to grace our shores and do a joint venture with Punk Worship! 

If you have a spare €11 (about £8) in your PayPal account then I’d recommend this CD – it may not be hardcore punk, there may be a little too much sugar-coating at times but these guys are definitely on the right track.

by MaFt - 2007-08-27

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