Any time some dudes from other bands leave those bands and start another band together, they’re inevitably lumped in/mentioned in the same breath with their previous band. It’s like an awful unwritten law of bad music journalism. Foo Fighters have been around for 15 years and somehow people still manage to make note of the fact that, yes, Dave Grohl used to be the drummer of Nirvana. So in the interest of trying to combat that nonsense, I’ll do my best to keep such things to minimum here.

So let’s get some of that out of the way now. Yes, Fred Mascherino used to be in Taking Back Sunday, Andy Jackson was in Hot Rod Circuit, and Josh Eppard was in Coheed & Cambria. They’re now Terrible Things and their debut album is a pretty impressive one. Yes there are some similarities to TBS and HRC, but definitely not so much to C&C, though Eppard’s fine drumming is alive and present here. While the music itself isn’t anything revolutionary, it is well written and downright catchy. Think late 90s/early ‘00s rock with a bit of a punk edge to it: Craig’s Brother, No Motiv, and well, TBS and HRC.

The vocals are really solid and one of the big pluses for me on this record. For some of the songs, the one main downside is the chorus lyrics. They tend to be a little simplistic, ranging from a bit goofy to downright clichéd. But beyond that, the songs have a nice range musically, flowing well together, but having enough variety and dynamics to keep from getting repetitive.

All in all, this is great freshman record from Terrible Things. These guys definitely have the chops to write some solid music. I hope they stick together long enough to really knock it out of the park. And hopefully people will quickly see them as a cohesive unit, rather that just the sum of their previous parts.