Male Bonding / Eat Skull - Year’s Not Long / Heaven’s Stranger

Pop punk ain’t dead. I may be now though, seeing as I don’t reckon Male Bonding or Eat Skull consider their sound quite so cleaned up.

Tough Love Records have chosen the two DIY dieux to star on the first in a new series of double a-side splits. Sweet, no? Both bands mirror one another over the Atlantic: one an established London good times trio, two thirds no-wave reprobates from PRE and fully rad. The other a West Coast noise pop quartet, with two albums already under their belts and boasting an important fanbase including No Age and Times New Viking. Both totally awesome.

The two tracks draw similarities in their fuzzy production and toe-tapping wholesomeness. Male Bonding’s ‘Year’s Not Long’ holds a catchier riff, with a true pop-punk sounding refrain of “Yeaaaaaaaarr’s not long.” Eat Skull, however, have a more elderly stance. ‘Heaven’s Stranger’ echoes late 70s punk; shorter, sweeter(?) and clearly more jammy. But that isn’t to say better. Both groups have naturalised and firmed their sound, and it can only be a good thing that they ain’t identical. What would be the point in it being a double a-side otherwise?