Virgin Radio 99.9 Toronto

Mike Herrera, Yuri Ruley, and Tom Wisniewski have been rocking the kids for Ten Years And Running, as their 2002 retrospective proudly puts it. While their third outing for A&M mostly traces the peaks and valleys of a bipolar relationship, tracks like "Play It Loud" and "Kings of Hollywood" assert the band's van-touring pride and dedication to "left coast punk rawk" [sic]. Reaching out to freshly minted suburbanite punk Benji Madden for guest vocals only solidifies the band's status as ten-and-five men. For Before Everything & After, the veteran trio has embraced the big-budget punk-pop treatment that regularly tweaks albums by junior leaguers like A New Found Glory or Madden's own Good Charlotte. Mixing from the ubiquitous Lord-alge brothers squeegees clean each cut, plugging power chords into punchy drum fills, processing vocals to within an inch of their humanity, and putting pop accessibility way before any punk revivalist relevancy. You might recognize "Well Adjusted" from its role in a popular Pepsi commercial; in any case, its vintage Green Day crunch is powerful. The song's carefully cleansed grit will light up the LEDs on your car stereo, but if you can tell it apart from its brethren, you win a Hercules wristband. Following standard operating procedure, Before Everything's handful of rock anthems is accompanied by a midsection of pop-punk power ballads. Synths, treated piano, surging string sections, and robot vocal processing all dress up "Don't Walk Away" and "Quit Your Life," where Herrera gives his emotional perspective on a bicoastal romance. ~ Johnny Loftus, All Music Guide