Los Pepes - Positive Negative

WHAT?! I wake up today and suddenly a new Los Pepes album has popped up seemingly out of nowhere?! This is almost too much joy for one man to handle! For five years now, I have been closely following the musical progression of the "loudest power pop band on earth". After perfecting Good Vibrations Records inspired powerpop punk on its first couple of albums, this London outfit has proceeded to inch closer and closer to the blistering sonic fury it's known for on stage. If you're not ready to have your ears blown clean off of your head, you should be very careful laying that needle down onto Positive Negative!

If your knowledge of Los Pepes precedes 2017's Let's Go!, you might be taken aback by how less "poppy" Positive Negative sounds than the band's first two LPs. What we've got here, my friends, are 11 tracks of ripping rock and roll taking equal cues from '60s mods and '70s punks. This, to me, is the "Motörhead gone power pop" sound Los Pepes were going for from the start. There's still plenty of pop in the equation, but here the band leans just as much toward the tougher side of '77 punk (Testors, Dead Boys) and the thundering energy of early Who. The band hits the ground running with "Still Belong To Me" and "Positive Negative" - a 1-2 punch firmly establishing this as a balls-out rock and roll record. You can easily imagine these guys playing your local watering hole and tearing the roof off of the place (I think that's actually happened a few times). Those guitars are pure fire! Those two along with "Aint Life Easy" and "We Need It" are definitely the most ferocious studio tracks Los Pepes have ever committed to tape. Elsewhere, the band puts the power in power pop on "Think Back", summons the spirit of Slaughter and the Dogs on "Frustration", and revisits its earlier pop/punk sound on the excellent "Medication". And to close the album, "Action" is a great cover of legendary NYC punks The Knots. 

Positive Negative is that rare record that ought to have the old school punks, garage freaks, pop geeks, and rock and roll purists in a unified state of elation. If no power pop is ever powerful enough to suit your tastes, Los Pepes might have finally won you over. Their best album in years!



-L.R.

https://lospepes.bandcamp.com/ 
https://wandarecords.bandcamp.com/album/positive-negative 
https://www.facebook.com/lospepesmusic