Prince Daddy & The Hyena

4 not bad

A rockin good time

Heard of this band before but hadn't listened heavily. This LP is fine, if a bit all over the place – think the intro promised a much more expansive, creative melodic promise than the standard garageish-poppish-punk that was presented. Certain elements like the dance intro on 'El Dorado' feel way out of place and distract from the flow as well. Sits on the knife edge of a 2.5 for me but I'll round to 3 given I enjoyed some of the tracks. Definitely not a must-listen before you die though.

There are bands that can handle forays into different music genres well. And there is Prince Daddy & The Hyena which, when they stray away from their pop-punk sprinkled with emo flourishes, most often fail to deliver the goods in my eyes. When it becomes difficult to decide whether your intent is parodic or not, you need to question what it is that you are doing. Maybe those cringe tracks exploring soft-rock tones -- "...Something Special", "El Dorado", "Curly Q", to which you can add the "ambient" opener "Adore The Sun" -- exist because of some internal narrative concept giving birth to the record as a whole. But since the lyrics are way too cryptic for me to fully understand what goes on in that frontman's brains, you're just left with quite horrible music plaguing the tracklist. As for Prince Daddy & the Hyena's initial strand of pop punk, I would lie if I stated I'm head over heels about the manner they play and write in that style. The influences listed by the band make sense, the thing is indeed a mix between Green Day, Jeff Rosenstock and My Chemical Romance. Unfortunately, the needle teeters a little too close towards the latter for my tastes... "Hollow, As You Figured" is a mean, impressive track that sounds better than anything MCR has ever churned out, though. And the last leg of the record is successful for me. "Shoelaces" and "In Just One Piece" are very decent songs, not overly original in their compositional parts, but they do their job right. And the slow and ominous "Black Mold" and "Baby Blue" succeed in launching one last tortured build-up to cap things off. When I saw that "Black Mold" was a nine-minute track, I thought: 'no way this thing can work for nine minutes without some major changes to the music down the line'. And yet, for me, the song *did* work while digging the same groove until the end. It's simply a miracle. I wouldn't call the whole album a miracle however. There are too many clunky parts in it, either musically or lyrically -- parts that I can also find in the other records from this band I have listened to today, with or without major stylistic changes in them. So you won't see me file this act next to Jeff Rosenstock, Pup or Weezer. Not by a long shot. An album by this band was released this year, by the way. Dropping his raspy timbre for clean-sounding vocals, Prince Daddy & The Hyena's singer now sounds as if he wants to explore Blink-182-adjacent turf. Good luck with that. Let's just say that it is not the sort of endeavor that can make me want to retrospectively redeem obvious flaws in previous records from this American act. This also suggests that the "slacker punk" shtick of the band's early albums was just a passing phase -- which, as such, a lot of people will probably soon forget about. Which reminds me... It's time for me to get off the couch as well and do something with my day. Bye, punks. 2/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums. 7/10 for more general purposes (5 for the musicianship and production values + 2 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 118 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 132 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 289 (including this one) ---- Ah Émile, je viens de me rendre compte que c'est à moi de répondre ! Je me suis emmêlé les pinceaux sur le suivi des messages cet été, on dirait... Petite question au préalable : tu as rejoint le serveur discord du générateur ? Et si oui, quel est ton pseudo là-bas ? Dis-moi juste ta réponse là-dessus dans ta prochaine review dès que tu vois ce message. Je te réponds ensuite en bonne et due forme dans la foulée (je vérifierai tes reviews tous les jours ou quasi, j'ai moyen de le faire, je suis toujours en vacances...

Ok, again, no Wikipedia page for the album. There is nothing special about his album. 2.5/5