Bands need to stop trying to sound like Gang of Four. It's a fact that they will never be Gang of Four, and no one ever will be. Of course there will be cover bands, but those songs are Gang of Four songs. Leave the repetition for Clear Channel Radio, such memorable music isn't meant to be over played.
The first time I listened to The Death of a Party I have to admit I was interested. There is a piece of dance-punk in us all isn't there? The bass lines are forever with us just as are the move busting drumbeats and the rhythm snapping guitars. Even if you have never heard Gang of Four, you know who they are. You have heard them in your sleep if not in your dreams.
So the question is, how does The Death of a Party tie into all of this?
Well, if you haven't already guessed it, there are similarities. It's very painful to listen to this whole album for a number of reasons. Something that no band should ever do is try to fit their genre. Genres are created only because someone, who ever that deviant fellow (or fellows) may be, stepped outside of that forbidden box. That's why we have sub genres. Anyway, this isn't supposed to be a history on genres, even though it's beginning to sound like it.
Everything about The Death of a Party has been heard. If you sat Bloc Party and Gang of Four in a box, put them in a back of a beat up Cadillac and then pushed it off a sky scraper, then whatever sound is made right before the crash of the unfortunate vehicle, is The Death of a Party. The band name is way too typical. Again, it fits the genre far too well. The lyrics are cheap rip offs of any Blood Brothers song. For example,
In Exhibt A she states; she says, "You'll be the fox." / In Exhibit B she states; she says, "I'll be the hound, & / I'll find you a faceless crowd, / Yeah you know I'll hunt you down."
