Is it a testament to our pop supremacism or to the isolation of exotic New Zealand that none of us seem to have heard of this 24 year-old band?

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Brad Shoup: Distinguishes itself with the glammy, bass-fed stomp. I was hoping for more of the lilt in the first couple bars of the chorus, but maybe I have to stop appreciating “pretty” in my modern rock.
[5]

Iain Mew: If you’re going to sing about wrecking balls hitting out of nowhere, you better have the sounds to match. Shihad’s thick bassline, thwacks of percussion and demolition-force riffs are well up to the task, and the band eases off just enough at the start of the chorus to bring in a bit of light and shade to the attack.
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Jonathan Bogart: I’d built up an immunity through exposure to this stuff by 1998. It might be very good; I can’t tell. It can’t get into my system.
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Alfred Soto: Mastodon riffs and vocals that sound like they’re being squeezed through a combine. When done well, I’ve got a weakness for this nonsense.
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Will Adams: I keep telling myself that one day we’ll find a way to accurately compress aggressive rock into a digital file. We’ve clearly still got some work to do.
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Anthony Easton: My best friend has been in Edmonton for the last week, and we have constantly talked — over dinner, on the bus, at brunch, walking through the neighbourhoods. Often it’s about music: country because I’m interested in it, but also hip-hop, current electronica, some pop songs, and some historical work as well. I almost never listen to rock, and Pat was my go-to source for it. But we have only ever talked about rock twice on this trip — once at a used record store while crate digging, about some of the classics of the genre I have missed, and once on Sunday, in the middle of a discussion of gender, class, rural culture, hunting, and Blake Shelton, where he dropped this bon mot: “Have you looked at the Billboard Top 20 Rock Chart? It’s dire.” Listening to this, I think he’s right.
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