Hawking Punk for Ca$h

Various Artists
"Tony Hawk's American Wasteland Soundtrack"
(Vagrant)

Hydrox is the generic version of Oreos. They never taste as good, they aren't nearly as fattening as Oreos. People who buy Hydrox cookies are either too cheap or too stupid to tell the difference. "American Wasteland" is the "punk" version of Hydrox cookies -- it's not very good, nor is it satisfying.

This compilation has a bunch of young (i.e. marketable, popular, MTV-friendly) bands covering old punk standards, and for the most part, it all blows chunks.

Here are the good songs that you should download: "Ever Fallen In Love." That's it. Thursday is the only band that didn't manage to piss on the band that they were trying to cover.

Fall Out Boy's take on Gorilla Biscuits is sad. Walter should take a break from Walking Concert just to kick their asses for ruining a perfectly good song. In fact, that sentiment should be repeated for many of the bands. Emanuel's cover of The Stooges' "Search And Destroy" sucks; Taking Back Sunday adds girlish screams to two Descendents songs; and Saves The Day actually manages to destroy the Dead Boys' "Sonic Reducer" so badly that it sounds like an Nsync song.

Even bands who didn't completely fuck up their covers, like Hot Snakes, Thrice and The Bled, didn't do anything to raise the bar either. They sounded like karaoke versions of the songs they were trying to do. Who ever thought that Alkaline Trio could so be damn mediocre?

It's a pretty sad state of punk rock when these run-of-the-mill Hot Topic bands are completely shitting all over the politics and anything else these bands stood for. "American Wasteland" is a waste of plastic and Tony Hawk should be ashamed that his name is attached to this giant Hydrox cookie masquerading an Oreo.