RADKEY ROMANCE DAWN

I stumbled across this song a while ago and was struck more by the references in the title than anything else. Being a part-time One Piece (it's a manga about pirates) fan, you'd have looked up to find out, or already known, that Romance Dawn is the sort of proto-One Piece; it was short-lived but it grew into what is now like one of the most popular mangas ever ever. Isn't that fun? So anyway, I was quite surprised when I saw that this song by Radkey was called 'Romance Dawn' - but then I, as I so often do, forgot about it and continued surfin' the web. (That's still an expression, right?)

But I heard it on the radio the other night and was enjoying it rather a lot - without knowing it was Radkey. Then strangely I decided to look up the song again today. Long damn story short, I re-found the song and am sitting here right now writing about it.

Anyway. Whatever, right? Whatever indeed. So we continue. Read on. Radkey is or are a trio (brothers, in fact, but not triplets) from Missouri, USA, who play punk rock music. They sure do. But there's a lotta different types of punk out there: combine the word with any other genre and you have a different type every time - punk rock, punk pop, electro punk, thrash punk - so what's different about Radkey's stuff?

Well, with a distinctive voice - something like lip-curling rockabilly crossed with black-metal glam projected theatrics - the vocals lead an easy-to-chant-to galloper of a song. I don't use this epithet very much, but I'd say it's pretty "high-octane" - energy explodes out of this one. Thick guitars chomp through riffs of varying tempo, especially in the full throttle drum-spasms just before the break where the gutsy bass takes the spotlight, and a driving guitar solo noodles around towards the end - all very energetic.

The intro to the song sounds like something an aggressive biker might hear in his head in his first few seconds of waking up. It's also one heck of a build up. The drums rollick around before galloping into the verse, before the crashing chorus which is complete with some almost-obligatory "Hey-hey!"s sung by the backing vocals. There's something a bit Offspring about this - you know what I mean? Only a bit. It's different, of course, but it's nice to hear familiarity too.

This comes from Radkey's upcoming Devil Fruit (another One Piece reference) EP, out 14th October.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Like Radkey on Facebook
Listen to Radkey on Soundcloud
Visit Radkey official site
Follow Radkey on Twitter
> Watch Radkey on YouTube