Boils

It only makes sense that when one of Celtic punk rock’s biggest bands makes a strong connection with a particular sporting team that the rest will follow and duly support their own. Keeping the tradition of Boston’s Dropkick Murphys (a few years late, mind you), who released a baseball-centric album, Philadelphia’s the Boils stick a bit closer to their own oi inspiration with The Orange And The Black, an effort entirely dedicated to the meathead pursuit known as hockey. Emblazoned with Flyers logos from front to back (a band photo on the ice in requisite jerseys is a nice touch), there’s no mistaking what this effort is about. Mind you the six songs with titles such as "Warriors Of The Ice” and "I’m A Hockey Fan” don’t hurt either, or expound the possibility of personal improvement for that matter. Eloquent lyric twisting tries to portray hockey players as heroes riding into battle, making The Orange And The Black either incredibly inspirational or banal and relatively silly. We’ll go with the latter. On a purely musical level, which is hard to stick with given the aforementioned relentless tirade on the wonders of the sport, the album is standard fare oi: simplistic, beat-heavy music full of chants and a vocal metre that fails to deviate from the rap of the snare drum. Talk about paring down your cult/subgenre even further.