Album Review: Aerial Salad – 'Dirt Mall'

Full frontal explosive and fun punk rock.

The new wave of ‘punk’ that has come around in the last few years has focused on angular riffing, poetic lyrics and an awareness of politics. That is all well and good, plenty of these bands are brilliant. However, ‘punk’ isn’t all about that. Sometimes you just need some thrashing guitars, great hooks and a sense of fun. Aerial Salad do just that with their second album Dirt Mall.

 Like any great punk rock record, Dirt Mall is born out of the frustration of being young, working shit jobs (if you can get one in the first place) and finding your place in the world. You can tell that this is the case just looking at the song titles (‘Temp’, ‘Lazy’, ‘Stressed’).  The way that Aerial Salad tackle these subjects is through what are essentially pop songs. They are very similar to the 80s and 90s US punk bands such as Bad Religion, Rancid, and when Green Day were still bratty punks. This influence makes sense as they were inspired to form after vocalist/guitarist Jamie Munro went to THE FEST in Gainesville, Florida.

There’s also that sense of fun in lead single and second track ‘Romance’, which is a very British, Slaves-esque humour that just simply works. It’s not all laughs and jokes, of course. Songs such as ‘Fever Dream’ are more melodic and pop. The huge chorus has a Britpop vibe, and you can imagine early 90s Liam Gallagher belting this one out.

Words by Matthew Brocklehurst

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