I first heard about DOUBLE STANDARDS through my friend Miggy who plays with Matt in
Terrifying Girl's High School, but plays bass, synths and takes on half of the vocal duties in this band. Are they screamo too? Heck no, they play
Death From Above 1979 worship and do so with a synthy,
One Day As A Lion twist.
They released a few poorly recorded songs on '
Demos', of which three of the five were rerecorded for their proper EP the following year, so I'll just quickly go over the exclusive two. The first is titled "Famous is Dead" and lays the synthy bass out in full before swooping in with drums and very sassy vocals that nearly break themselves at 1:23. I even like the weird spacey part right before three minutes which has a bit of a late
Snack Truck-era feel to it. This is a pretty decent song and think it would have translated well to the self titled 2014 release if it had been redone. "Shit Park" is a little more refined, perhaps, but does push a writhing, pulsating rhythm section amidst some very sugary sweet vocals mixed with the
Alkaline Trio-soaked punk singing.
It was 2014's self titled '
Double Standards' EP that I first heard in the middle of 2017 and I was instantly hooked. Beginning with a sick 8-bit Nintendo intro, the Death From Above 1979 becomes more than apparent 25 seconds in with bombastic bass, bouncy drums and a mixture of sassy singing and the odd scream. The vocals are seriously kickass and carry the recordings, although I certainly enjoy everything else going on in each song. That intro riff repeats at 1:30 with dual vocals, then screaming and then another infectious chorus. It's like
At The Drive In mixed with
The Advantage,
Death From Above 1979 and
One Day As A Lion, oooo baby. The synths leading up to the three-minute mark are especially Zack De La Rocha, but I was flabbergasted to find out that one of the two members was not even aware of
One Day As A Lion...so maybe I'm delirious. "Legless Pirates Don't Give a Fuck" is decent and houses the heaviest section recorded thus far just after the 30-second mark before wiggling back into their dance groove. If I had to make a comparison I would probably liken parts of this to
Dance Disaster Movement, a band you've likely not heard but should definitely check out. After this decent track the band moves back into awesome mode with "You just brought a gun to a Bomb Fight". This one is driving at first, but switches seamlessly to that
Death From Above groove 20 seconds in tacks a great vocal hook to the end of the first verse, "these words mean nothing". After cycling through these motions again (as I nod in approval) they dip into another
One Day As A Lion synth-down until 2:14 when they hit that verse/chorus for the third time but string a few phenomenal "woahs" to the end, making it the highlight of the entire EP. Closer "1-2-3 Tsunami" is nearly 7 minutes in length, that's almost twice as long as the first three songs. The opening is pretty anthemic and choppy which eventually smooths out after 40 seconds, while chorus is pretty dang catchy but the vocals rarely hit those higher, sassy notes - thus leaving me craving more.
Speaking of craving more, they recorded an EP a year or two ago but recordings were tainted, so apparently the recording guy stopped responding and they have been lost. However, on Nov 5th, 2018 the band posted about recording new music soon, so I expect we'll have something in 2019. Yay!!!
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