★★★★★
Manchester's Throwing Stuff kicked things off with a set of short, sloppy, none-too-serious 80s-style hardcore. Lead singer Ben Small bridged the gap between band and slightly standoffish crowd by stomping around the floor, yelling into the microphone as if his life depended on it. The 9-to-5 disaffection of "Steve's Job" stood out, as did their sped up cover of Joni Mitchells's "Big Yellow Taxi", which raised a chuckle if only for the Anglicisation of the lyrics (they put up a car park...
- www.punknews.org
2014-10-21
★★★★★
With a max capacity of 280 guests Club Sedel in Lucerne, Switzerland is a very small venue for mostly punk and metal shows. It is also a place where currently over a hundred local bands share 52 rehearsal rooms in what used to be a prison. In 1981 the two cell blocks to either side of the main entrance, which were used as a state archive for 10 years after having shut down the jail in 1971, were rebuilt and turned into band rooms of the size of one, two or three cells...
- www.punknews.org
2014-09-20
★★★★★
With their familiar police siren wail, Masked Intruder welcome you to their sophomore LP, the not-so-creatively-titled M.I.. It tears into the predictable Queers-via-Ramones furious downpicked riffs, and some poppy-as-shit vocals about being beaten up by the cops. It's what's to be expected.
But who the fuck cares? At this point, if you're not sick of their jokes and sugary vocals, you're ready for plenty more...
- www.punknews.org
2014-05-28
★★★★★
Unlike the vast majority of the Punknews community, this writer wasn't immediately smitten with Masked Intruder's self-titled 2012 debut full-length. It had its moments ("Stick 'Em Up" remains a house party staple to this day) but by and large I felt the songs weren't strong enough to make the gimmick completely work, and found myself reaching for The Ergs!, Teenage Bottlerocket and Off With Their Heads when I needed a modern pop-punk fix...
- www.punknews.org
2014-05-28
★★★★★
Don't let your parents or the police fool you, crime pays. Just ask the four guys in Masked Intruder. Ever since their demo came out in 2011, these four multicolored masked criminals have progressively parlayed a life of crime into pop-punk glory. 2012's self-titled release brought their playfully nefarious intentions to a growing audience, eager for catchy sing-alongs about love, stalking and petty theft, all while dripped in harmonies so sweet they're cavity inducing...
- www.punknews.org
2014-05-28
★★★★★
Masked Intruder's sophomore full-length, M.I., is cut from the exact same cloth as the cloaked quartet's self-titled debut: They're both 13 tracks, they both clock in around 30 minutes, and they're both packed with humorous, catchy, retro-leaning bubblegum pop-punk that melds together Screeching Weasel, the 1994 versions of Green Day and Weezer, and That Thing You Do!'s fictional Wonders...
- www.altpress.com
2014-05-24
★★★★★
What springs to mind when you think of romantic music? Is it Barry White's booming bass voice filling a candlelit room? What about the slow grooves of Maxwell's first album or the rhythmic shapeshifting on . Or is it pop-punk? It's got to be pop-punk. If you haven't heard Masked Intruder, that might seem a little confusing. They're an absolute gimmick in the most charming of ways; a four piece, colour-coded pop-punk band with sugary sweet melodies and a penchant for petty crimes...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2014-02-15
★★★★★
Ah, Christmas. That magical time of year when bands come together to capitalize on people's seasonal spending sprees by putting their own spin on traditionally terrible songs. Sure, we all had a good laugh at the Twisted Sister Christmas album. Some of us even appreciated the irony of Bad Religion doing Christmas covers. Call me a Grinch, but I have always thought these kinds of albums were as welcome as a hangnail and needed to be stopped...
- www.punknews.org
2013-12-07
★★★★★
An album being performed in its entirety for the first time, a man in a green mask owning a cover of Green Day's "JAR," and a singer/songwriter from across the pond singing directly to your soul. If you weren't at Motorco Music Hall in Durham, NC, on July 22, 2013, you missed one memorable show.
While the opening acts had already set the bar pretty high, Masked Intruder stole this night's Red Scare Across America show, a crime they are more than familiar with...
- www.punknews.org
2014-02-04
Loading...
