The Fake Boys, The Rolemodels, and The Frustrators

I thought I'd shed some light on a few new bands I've heard, who's music's been interesting enough to write about. First up The Fake Boys, who hail from somewhere in Massachusetts (their myspace page just lists it as Merrimack Valley). The band is signed to Cheapskate Records but their sound differs a lot from most of the Cheapskate bands like The Guts, The Leftovers, and The Prozacs, who all have a sound based heavily on bands like The Queers and Screeching Weasel. The Fake Boys meanwhile list their top influence as Jawbreaker, and sound more like them than the aforementioned bands. The band has an EP coming out titled "Pop Punk Is Dead", and based on the songs from it on their myspace, it should make for a worthy purchase. The songs sound great ("Bugs" is the best track of them), and the production sounds incredibly crisp for a local band on a very small label. You can check the band out here.



Next up, The Rolemodels, who were recently featured on punknews.org. These guys are from Ithaca, New York and sound much like Bad Religion circa 80-85, if you like "How Can Hell Be Any Worse?" you'll dig this band. The Bad Religion resemblance is in part to due to the fact that the bands singer, Graham, is Greg Graffin's son. It's almost a shame that they're related as some people will inevitably right these guys off as trying to cash in on Bad Religion's success. As long as they don't immediately sign to something like Epitaph, and instead work their way up through the ranks, I don't have a problem with it. You can download their demo here.



Lastly after two new and fairly unknown bands, I'd like to profile an older (but not old) more well known (but not that well known) band, The Frustrators. Best known for having Green Day’s Mike Dirnt on bass, The Frustrators are from the East Bay region of California, though other than Dirnt, all the other members are originally from New England, and moved west. Like other Green Day side projects, Pinhead Gunpowder and The Network, The Frustrators are signed to Billie Joe Armstrong’s Adeline Records (which is owned by Warner), and I’m glad that they’re honest and list their label type as “major” unlike some other bands on imprint labels of Major companies. If you like Green Day’s older sound or Pinhead Gunpowder you’ll enjoy The Frustrators. You can listen to them here (“Living In The Real World” is their best track in my opinion).