Have you ever bought a split record that made absolutely no sense because the two bands sharing a disc sound nothing alike? As illogical a notion as it is, this phenomenon happens more often than you would think. Anyone remember those two splits The Lawrence Arms did with the Chinkees and Shady View Terrace? Yeahââ¬Â¦ But that is not the case with Leftover Crack and Citizen Fish's Deadline. Both bands are all about politics and (supposedly) come from the streets, so their union is only natural. The only difference being that Citizen Fish is much more of a ska-punk/street punk mix than Leftover Crack, who like to dabble in ska when they feel the need to change things up.
Citizen Fish explodes out of the gate with horns blaring in "Working on the Inside", a great ska-punk anthem about how changing the world by working with the people you're against is a naïve plan. The band does two Leftover Crack covers, "Money" and "Clear Channel (Fuck Off)", both of which are pretty standard, as is most of their side of the split. Aside from "Working on the Inside", Citizen Fish's songs are largely unremarkable aside from a few of the songs' lyrics, which I at least found to be interesting (The track "Meltdown" comes to mind). The band tends to fall into the same trappings that cause me to dislike The Subhumans: everything begins to blend together as their songs continue to play one after another and nothing really stands out that much. However, there's really nothing bad about any of the songs.
Leftover Crack's side of the split begins with their obligatory and borderline irritating introduction where someone says "The good, the bad, and the Leftover Crack", and it's as moronic and predictable as one could expect from this band at this point. Not to spoil it or anything, but they mention killing cops. Wow. Edgy.
Once the music kicks in with the first actual song, "Baby-Punchers", things go straight into familiar territory with a ska riff deftly transitioning the listener from the first half of the album into the second half. And for the most part, there's not much to say about Leftover Crack's half of this disc because it runs together for the most part. They continue to beat their "shocking" image into the ground with the typical over-the-top lyrics (the eloquent and clearly inspired opening line in "Baby-Punchers" is "Fuck your flag and fuck your face") and it ends up just being more of the same, except for one song. "World War 4" is the best song on Deadline. The music is some of the best Leftover Crack has written, and that helps the track easily stand out among the rest of the songs. Vocally, it still feels a bit standard until it gets to the chorus, but the music is epic, powerful, and completely fitting for a song named World War 4.
The best part of Deadline is not the music. The part of this record that garnered most of my attention was in fact the packaging, as strange as that sounds. I haven't seen this much thought put into creating an aesthetically pleasing design for a record in a long time, and I'll be surprised if I see something better this year. Everything from the monochromatic painting of a skeleton in a valley flooded with an apocalyptic nuclear orange glow that adorns Deadline's cover to the black and white murals filled with symbolic imagery in the booklet, this makes buying a physical copy of the product worth it. If more bands put this much thought into creating an engaging experience when you buy a physical copy of an album, it might cause people to go back to actually buying CDs instead of downloading. I applaud Leftover Crack and Citizen Fish for going the extra mile, but unfortunately the music does not live up to the packaging. How often can you say that?
