Birmingham's Victory Lane, Barebones - EP review

Safe. Safe, safe, safe.

There's no better description of this sophomore EP from Birmingham pop-punk quartet Victory Lane.

The production is slick and sleek. You'd expect nothing less from Romesh Dodangoda of Longwave Studios (Bring Me The Horizon, Don Broco). The vocals are nasal and high-pitched. The guitar riffs quick-paced and frantic. It has all the ingredients of a successful collection for this corner of the guitar-thrash market.

There's nothing wrong with their approach and this is certainly not a scathing assessment of their creations. But the snobbish among local music fans will likely turn their nose up at the middle-of-the-road feel to the five tracks.

Big, swooping melodies (Happy Sad), quick-time, thumping percussion (Life Past 98), and summertime house party vibes (Creative Control) are the main order of the day throughout for an EP that will surely please the younger listener market these releases are usually aimed at.

The third of the tracks mentioned above, Creative Control, is perhaps the best of the bunch with an open-wide chorus full of life and vigour as the percussion thunders throughout.

In sharp contrast to this is the slowed down, harmonised closer Firing Line, which is the poppiest song present. The backing vocals from Dan Rowbottom do grate here, sounding a little out of place when contrasted to the more agitated style of frontman Dan Lamb. The contrast here between the 'scratch' and 'clean' if you like is too harsh. Perhaps these guys will find a better working relationship with more releases and time together?

Lead single Happy Sad could have been plucked from a time machine buried solidly in the early 00s. It's like an American teen coming-of-age flick rolled into a concise three minute and 25 second run time. In fact, most films of this period could have done with that. Happy Sad doesn't suffer such a fate. There's enough punch to the post-chorus instrumentals to make it a good listen, and the fast-paced interludes will create a few circular pits at their shows if the crowd fancy it.

It's a weirdly in-the-middle EP from the band who seem comfortable enough in this style while displaying a slight itch to break away from it and go heavy.

We'll see which way they go.

Rating: 5/10

Victory Lane play their hometown at Birmingham's The Victoria, on John bright Street, tonight, supported by Melwood, The Well Runs Red and Dxwnsides