Though Osker sticks to the same style as on its previous album, with rowdy guitars and Devon Williams' sputtering, desperate delivery, the band makes...

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Though Osker sticks to the same style as on its previous album, with rowdy guitars and Devon Williams' sputtering, desperate delivery, the band makes its style sizzle on this record. While the band makes more concessions to ubiquious emo -- melody has a more important role in the band's songs, and Williams sounds like he sits at the precipice of emotional breakdown as often as he plays the role of the angry punk -- there's still enough edge in the band to make Idle Will Kill tower over its predecessor.
The most exciting thing about Idle Will Kill is Osker's mastery of its style. While last year's effort foreshadowed the band's disdain for the easily copied So-Cal punk style, its idiosyncratic take on punk rock is in full bloom on this record. Guitars are still apt to launch into crunchy, fast-paced riffs, though more deliberate, melodic breaks in the action make the band's harder side hit with more ferocity. Whether the band hangs a lonely guitar up in a midpaced weepy ("Kinetic") or throws down a melodic track filled with acoustic guitar that strips off the distortion and showcases the beauty of the band's songwriting ("Patience") there's much more respect for the more delicate side of songwriting on this album. Don't let that fool you: Osker still blows through the hearty punk rock like nobody's business with its share of burly tracks ("Contention").
Youth rarely sounds as honest as it does as Osker hangs up its dirty laundry on this album. Williams has the rare ability to make his delivery speak volumes about his subject matter and fill in the blanks that his minimal lyrics leave. Although Williams' words frequently look strange on paper -- they rarely scan and rhyme's a tool used infrequently -- when they come out of his mouth, they both make sense and sound great. If Williams bemoans the waiting game of growing up ("Anchor") or captures the tense standoff between a pair of feuding lovers ("Animal"), his idiosyncratic songwriting style shines on this record.

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This is a wonderful record. Punk rock but never predictably so, OSKER, young and inventive, are almost everything a modern band of this kind should...

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This is a wonderful record. Punk rock but never predictably so, OSKER, young
and inventive, are almost everything a modern band of this kind should be: post-
modern but never cynical, angry but never naive, accomplished but never reverential.
With a sound that slumps somewhere between Rancid and the Violent Femmes,
OSKER, who sound both pissed and pissed off, work on all manner of levels. If
all you want to do is dance, then Idle Will Kill - great title, no? - is a blast.
Within the ricochet beats and jarring guitars there are great songs. And when
vocalist Devon Williams sneers about 'making friends with f**king rock critics'
the reverberations are one of a sophisticated and intelligent sense of anger.
Quite something.

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