Living With Lions

It may only be six songs long but the pop punk-fuelled hardcore that churns about on Dude Manor is one of Western Canada’s stronger releases of late. Created in the dingy, cavernous recesses of a Vancouver band house, this album oozes all of the confused aggression and disassociation with society one would expect from a band barely together long enough to know each other’s darkest secrets, let alone how to play together. Emotive without being absolutely emo, the album is forthright enough to feel passionate, taking subtle turns just when it seems to border on the moment of getting bogged down by its own math influence and cathartic tendencies.