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- By date
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Seamless without being monotonous, "Buzzcocks" is punk rock for grownups, teenagers, and everyone in between, without pandering or becoming a caricature of itself.
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FilterCoherent and musically mature even as it kicks you around a bit. [#5, p.88]
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Entertainment WeeklyIt's nice to hear that middle-age hasn't diminished [their] songwriting skills. [28 Mar 2003, p.69]
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May well be the best of its seven studio albums, one that even approaches the heights of the stellar Singles Going Steady collection.
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MagnetEven at their most obvious, the Buzzcocks can smoke the young guns. [#58, p.83]
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Hard to imagine Green Day or Rancid having anything this interesting up their sleeve 27 years down the line from their first recording.
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Alternative PressA smart, slashing set of B-plus-level pop-punk. [Apr 2003, p.78]
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This is an absolutely satisfying listen and a feat of songwriting that few acts could match.
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Q MagazineBack to basics. [May 2003, p.100]
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MojoAt times positively fizzes into life. [Jun 2003, p.110]
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They've still got angst to spare, but their wit has been ground down by 'maturity,' or whatever you want to call it, into a bitter thing that saps a lot of that reckless energy.
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UncutTheir love batteries have all but corroded and instead we've hangovers and metropolitan psychosis over the kind of guttural guitars you'd expect from their bastard American offspring. [May 2003, p.89]
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The album is good -- remarkably so considering how late it comes in a group's life span -- but it's still a late-era release and suffers from many of the same problems so common to that milieu.
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BlenderThey still spit nervous energy, but Shelly's melodies have suffered, and his pubescent whines have unfortunately matured into apologies for bad behavior. [#15, p.121]
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Granted, Buzzcocks sounds very '77/'78, albeit with better production, but it's largely devoid of the hooks, the melodies, and the anxious, deconstructed bubblegum pop feel that made the band's early material so memorable.
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This album is flat boring musically and sonically.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 2 out of 4
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Mixed: 1 out of 4
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Negative: 1 out of 4
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Sep 15, 2014
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MilesDMar 24, 2006Dense and loud!