Daggers

Professing kinship with the punk rock’n’roll world reined over by the likes of Electric Frankenstein and Zeke, the Daggers aspire to be as brazen as their influences on this sophomore release. Sadly, despite honourable intentions, it falls just shy of the intended mark. This is doubly depressing when one factors in that the Daggers boast paying dues in the likes of Huevos Rancheros, Forbidden Dimension, Art Bergmann Band and AFI. Unfortunately, a strong résumé doesn’t mean you’re the best man for the job. Once in a while, the odd riff rears its slinky, ugly head out of the mire, but for the most part, this album falls quickly into unremarkable background noise. Riddled with basic songs that meander on well past the relevancy of their four chords, an overall snotty yet glossy sonic style that lends itself more to sleazy Murderdolls-ish glam rock than to primordial punk rock’n’roll and an inescapable ho-humness, Tear It to Pieces barely puts a scratch in whatever it’s trying to destroy.