Growing up is indeed hard to do -- just ask anyone who's ever had to deal with the traumas and dramas of those awkward years. And in the music industry, not growing up is often the secret to success. The choice of "succeed or die" has never been more evident than on the major-label side of things, with groups being released from their contracts for failing to clear 300,000 copies of their initial releases. Then there's the road to maturity that most people in the punk kingdom dread.
Blink-182 made the attempt to cross over to a more melancholy side of things, and
Green Day went political. While CKY don't belong on the mall punk pedestal next to those two groups and their commercial accomplishments, they're weathering the storm just as well, if not better. In a three-year absence, much has changed on the metal landscape, and with that so has the group's sound. Attempting to distance themselves ever so slightly from their skate videos and the success of
Jess Margera's sibling Bam in the MTV world, CKY follow many of the same formulas that made
Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild such an honest, no-frills rock record free of punk and nu-metal absurdity. The interplay between
Chad Ginsburg and
Deron Miller is tighter than it's ever been, comparable to some of the finest rhythm playing
Helmet ever brought to the table. It's more heavy metal than it is punk, but some ever-so-subtle nods to
G.G. Allin move the music away from merely being a modern metal monster. It's no longer just simply the soundtrack for people who like to do stupid stuff. ~ Rob Theakston