While I don’t think Black Flag had derivitive music in mind when they wrote that line, the rage easily be applied. Chuck recently asked me to listen to a few tracks off of Anberlin’s Blueprints for the Black Market. Having little background in punk and emo, he wasn’t sure if it was really good (just like I’m usually not sure if a particular techno album that sounds good to me is actually good). I, on the other hand, was sure. It sucked. It didn’t suck because it was utterly awful. It sucked because it was utterly average. Perhaps if I’d heard Anberlin five years ago, I could stomach them, but not now after a seemingly interminable parade of emo pretenders. Even their positivity (I read about it, because I couldn’t get through enough of them to discover it for myself), couldn’t save them. Positivity is usually worth a few points in my book, but it wasn’t working for Anberlin. Emo was a great idea as a reaction to the stupid machismo of 80s hardcore. It was cool that bands could write misfit songs that didn’t revolve around hate and simpleton anger. But by the time Anberlin got to emo, it was just a structure within which a band could be sappy and maudlin and sell it as honesty. It almost makes me miss the old days of macho stupidity.
