BOSTON MANOR - Welcome To The Neighbourhood LP (Colour Vinyl)

Label: Pure Noise

For some time now, Boston Manor have been leagues above so many of the other pop-punk and emo bands in their field. "Be Nothing" saw them germinate and blossom, the sort of ragged, emotionally breathless album that felt darker and more genuine than what so much of their genre had to offer at the time. And that’s what’s undoubtedly been the biggest selling point of Boston Manor since – the ability to take a familiar emo framework and contort and mangle into something with far more edge and tangible, curdling anger. Even so, no one could have predicted where "Welcome To The Neighbourhood" would go.

To put everything into perspective, if Boston Manor had already raised the bar before, everything on "Welcome To The Neighbourhood" has it rocketing into the stratosphere in the way that only a reworking of this calibre could. It’s genuinely fantastic stuff from start to finish, another strength in this band’s already flourishing lineage and their timely transition to one of, if not the best band their scene has to offer.