All State Champion

Vancouver post-punkers All State Champion owe a fairly large debt of gratitude to local punk acts like d.b.s. and By A Thread. Clearly drawing influence from these and other emotional punk groups, All State Champion offer up ten tracks of angular, driving rock, leaning heavily to the emo side of the rock equation. Is It Nothing To You is far more reminiscent of Rites of Spring and other late ’80s emo pioneers than it is of today’s practitioners of the genre, a fact that helps to distinguish All State Champion from the current pack of emo boys and girls. Daniel Sioui’s fractured vocals are the perfect complement to the discordant music that accompanies them, while the abrasive guitar work of Sioui and band-mate Tim McGuinness drives the songs forward to their ultimately crushing climax. With effective production courtesy of ex-d.b.s. front-man Jesse Gander, Is It Nothing To You represents the beginnings of a band sure to find influence of their own in a scene which has inevitably inspired their own work.