Dead Ringer - Demo 2010

I was introduced to New Jersey's Dead Ringer through the now-deceased Mitch Clem Forum ("Clorum" for short) after vocalist Kristia Moya joined to share her new band's demo with the posters. Reading through the thread, my skull nearly cracked open when I saw totally unanimous praise for this band throughout. In my 3 1/2 years as a boardie, I'm pretty sure that was the sole instance of complete community acceptance of literally anything a single boardie had to share. Punknews and B9's board seemed to feel the same when I dug around the net for more info, so, intrigued as hell, I coasted along the wave of awe and hype, downloaded the demo and got to work on weighing its worth. After one spin, I added my compliance to the forum's anomalous chain of thumbs up, filed it away for some reason, then hastily moved into a 90's hardcore and powerviolence blitz that lasted for several months.

SO HERE WE ARE IN THE FUTURE. I had almost completely forgotten about this betwixt the aforementioned marathon and my current free-jazz/krautrock/noise/bullshit bender, but I noticed it sitting in my itunes library, noted that it was only 3 tracks deep, and decided to give it a review. Honestly, I'm a little confused by the memory of my initial reaction. I guess I was feeling especially non-critical at the time, but well... this is sort of dull. I mean, it isn't bad or incompetent by any means, and the band are certainly tight enough, but... this is the band that spawned a 3 page thread of comments like "this is great stuff" and "one of the best things I've heard this year"? Dead Ringer are made up of two members of Exit She Calls (a band I'd never heard of until their side project made waves) and play really generic 90's pop punk. Y'know, that grinding, not-so-hooky brand of uptempo pop-punk/skate-punk you'd expect out of Fat Wreck or Epitaph circa '92-'97? That's what this sounds like, except it's approximating Lemuria's schtick, whether by influence or chance. Of course, this only really extends as far as a similar vocal approach, what with the pristine female leads and the warbling, Calvin Johnson-esque accompaniments - otherwise, these three songs sound lack the dynamics, non-standard song structures, and consistent use of odd time signatures that make Lemuria so appealing.
As I said, though, there's still nothing necessarily "bad" about what these two are doing, but that's also where the problem lies. The band constantly hints at being able to play much more enticing, memorable music, but they never push beyond the tribute phase to sound anything but faceless and inoffensive. There's a reason this style of pop-punk was expanded upon so heavily in the 00's - it got worn the fuck out during the preceding decade and would have been pointless not to take cues from neighboring genres and draw from a wider pool of influences. It's the same thing that happened to hardcore punk in the early 80's, and again during the mid-90's. I feel like sort of an asshole bashing this upcoming band publicly, but it's only because I feel like they have the potential to be a lot more entertaining than this... like, I wouldn't bother calling out a shitty band I saw no reason to pay attention to or had any hope for.
I'm starting to sound like a faux-altruistic prick refuting my review, though, so here:

http://deadringer.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2010

One last thing: considering Dead Ringer states that they're for fans of Discount (among others), it's amazing how little this sounds like Discount. Unless they meant that both bands have a girl singer and that's probably your only criteria. In which case, yeah, spot on.