Kosher's Self Control has a really great cover. Featuring a cut-and-paste portrait of an angry punk yelling on the front and featuring titles like "Bored in America" and "Revolution," the packaging sells the band as an angry force of music. It is important to know that, because the cover represents everything that is wrong with the album. The band seems to have mastered the art of creating this aura of punk around themselves, but they never quite bothered to make the songs to match the attitude. For example, the song "Revolution" starts with a pretty simplistic riff and a sweet drum part, which seems to point toward the song building to something even better. But after the vocals kick it, it simply keeps doing the exact same thing, but with a singer over it. There is a nice breakdown in the middle, leading to an even faster version of what was going on before that. And then the song ends, leaving the listener with the bare minimum of what a punk song should deliver. The vocals are lifted straight out of Rancid and the lyrics are lifted right from a high school poetry class, while the actual music sounds like any number of faceless punk-pop groups, only angrier. The album is definitely not all bad; in fact, "Hypocrite Catastrophe" is quite catchy and has some good lyrics, while "Robot" has a great D.R.I.-style buildup and some good Pennywise chant-along moments. But for the most part, this is pretty average punk rock from a band with a great image, but no songs to match it. ~ Bradley Torreano