Mest - 'Mest' (Maverick)
3/5
By: Matt Tomiak
Those pesky Blink-182 boys have a lot to answer for. As well as providing a gleefully no-brow frat-boy soundtrack thoroughly appropriate for a world where grown men inserting staples into body parts constitutes television-worthy entertainment, they've also spawned a load of frighteningly popular, frighteningly similar bands.
To give Chicago quartet Mest their due, they are rather more serious than all this. They do make super-shiny pogo-punk in much the same vein as Bowling for Soup, New Found Glory, American Hi-Fi, Good Charlotte (whose guitarist Benji Madden guests here) and God knows how many other like-minded but less commercial acts.
And, sometimes, Mest sing nostalgically of ex-girlfriends ('Rooftops') and days gone by ('Lost, broken, confused'). Oft, they swear a lot ('Until I Met You': an unashamedly snotty Green Day based stomp-a-long, probably the best thing on the album). But, mostly, Mest deal with angsty teen insecurity and the tribulations of adolescence. Hardly earth-shatteringly original, then, but undeniably catchy: and no-one could argue that there's a market for this kind of thing...
But, sheesh, how many times has that been the bottom line for a nu-skool US pop-punk record in the last few years?
Artists in this article: Mest
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