Robyn Writes

Count To Four – Between Two Cities

It’s been well documented that on TwoBeatsOff, we’re big fans of the beard. To this day, the number one search string that leads you to our website is ‘punk rock beards’, which links you to the page of ours that gets the most hits – this top ten article I did on a presumably dull afternoon when I was 18. And if you like beards, then it stands to reason that you’ll like Count To Four, because they cram a ridiculous amount of beard references into their lyrics. The guys themselves range from the sexy five o’ clock shadow to the standard-yet-awesome beard punk grizzle. And that’s kind of how their debut, Between Two Cities, feels – ranging between playful, almost flirty pop-punk licks to deeper notions of troubled hearts.

Opener ‘I Hope Not’ is as good an indicator of this as any. Filled with clever puns (and those all important beard gags) as well as devastatingly catchy verses, it’s sweeter than a slice of Victoria sponge. Beneath all the bouncy riffs though, it’s a journey of self realisation; an affirmation that in fact, that one girl might not be life or death after all, and that’s okay. Count To Four continue to charm and disarm throughout the rest of the album. Tracks like ‘Plastic Dinosaurs’ and ‘Tear It Apart’ are all about growing up and getting out without losing sense of yourself, all layered over with ridiculously speedy palm mutes and pounding drums. It never really lets up, either. Sure, there’s tracks like ‘Get Into It’, which feels far more intimate due to the lyrics and a slower tempo, but they still provide a massive rush and provoke enormous grins. And yet, Count To Four are perhaps at their best when they throw down to some minor chords. ‘My M.O’, an ethics driven plea, is the most impassioned song on the album, and it’s filled with wonderful touches like a xylophone in the bridge and unexpected breakdowns. Not to mention that’s overlooking the fact that it’s the track where Mike Hayden’s vocals break from their usually measured and dulcet tones to a desperate and damning shout – and it works.

If there is any fault with Between Two Cities, it’s that the band don’t take a risk when they really should, and while for the most part, what they’ve got there is excellent, there’s a couple of tracks that could benefit from taking the plunge. For example, ‘Bottles and Books’, the closer, tries to deliver a similar kind of “you suck and I’m okay without you” effect as some of the earlier songs but nowhere near as well, perhaps due to a lack of ‘My M.O’ style passion coming through the vocals.

It’s very clear where Count To Four pull their influences from – there’s a strong sense of that early 2000s Drive-Thru kind of sound throughout – but Between Two Cities still sounds totally fresh. If you like your pop-punk with an old school feel but with a revived sense of reckless abandon and twenty-something feels, then Count To Four are the band for you. And beards, man. Beards.

4 out of 5 high fives!

Forever After – Wilderness

Forever After has made a real splash in the pool of UK emergent pop-punk with their catchy and hard-hitting sound. Having already secured themselves a strong local following in their home county of Essex, the young four piece has been delighting crowds all over the country, supporting other UK breakthrough acts such as Mallory Knox and Futures.

Within the folds of the six songs that make up Wilderness, the boys smash out true pop-punk, revealing apathy for popular culture and the stagnating society that is Britain in recession. There is more catchy melodies and sophistication than the “F**K YOU!” of straight up punk and there is much more honesty and aggression than the “love me, love me” of pop music. The lyrics emit the typical socialist vibes, “it’s down to us in the community”, delivering songs for the fans to empathise with, sharing the collective disdain for the mess today’s youth has been left with.

Opening track ‘I’ve Got Friends’, hooks in the listener with punk riffs, crashing drums and a sound which sees every instrument blend together to compliment Dom Littler’s vocals. With lyrics such as ‘I’ve got friends but they’re leaving me all the time’ it can show the sacrifices in dedicating your life to a band in its infancy as other friends go off to University or get ‘real’ jobs. The track is aggressive in a passionate way, delivering every line with a punch.

‘Game Over’ is just as catchy, although a tad slower, with verses that build up to a chorus packed with foot-tapping melodies and a fistful of energy. The drum and bassline bounce off each other joyfully alongside Littler’s raw, powerful vocals and this carries on into ‘Grab A Drink’ which screams to life with a strong riff before swirling into a combination of raw verses and a rhythmic chorus.

‘Stay’ swirls into life with an introduction that grabs the listeners unwavering attention. The song is one of the EPs most instrumentally refined, showcasing impulsive tempo transitions between verse and chorus with polished guitars, a leading bass and a supportive drum beat which forms the backbone of not only the track but the EP in its entirety. All four of them successfully flaunt their musical prowess to round off the song with a modest yet fruitful instrumental.

The stand out track on the release definitely comes in the form of ‘Stupidity’ which displays the songwriting talents of this young band. The vocals really come to the fore helping to emphasise what is without a doubt the lyrically best track on this release. Although it is vocally simplistic, the strength of deliverance and lyrical dexterity make up for it, with a cheekily rebellious feel to every line. The instruments again merge together as delicate guitars and a subtle beat support Littler’s singing to create an all-rounder hit. The Essex quartet really strike gold with this track, hitting out at popular culture and pop music in a similar vein to fellow Essex boys Inme with their ‘Single of the Weak’ a few years back.

‘Chapters’ rounds off the EP with the slow, simple, majestic feel of a ballad. An acoustic guitar and softer vocals hold the first half of the song until the drums kick in, but even then they manage to retain the slow and passionate feel it began with. As the only track that is not obviously pop-punk, ‘Chapters’ allows Littler’s emotive vocals layered on top of the musical accompaniments to provide a long outro to wind down the EP.

Considering the plethora of young pop-punk bands out there trying to be Blink-182 or Sum 41, in ‘Wilderness’ Forever After remain very pop-punky, but they do it bloody well. For fans of Mallory Knox; We Are The Ocean; New Found Glory, the Essex lads don’t reinvent the genre, but they don’t just copy all that has gone before either. ‘Wilderness’ forms a statement of intent for climbing high up the pop-punk ladder.

4 out of 5 high fives!

So, why the name change, Ripper?

Recently, I’ve been mulling over my on-screen pseudonym. I’ve already taken it out of my Twitter profile. I’ve been wondering whether I really needed it, especially when most of my writers hadn’t opted for one. We all display our full names on the about page anyway. So, I was in a bit of a quandary, but it was only when I had my mum read over my CV and go ‘ooh, that sounds a bit flaky, I’d take that out’ that I realised that it wasn’t really necessary any more.

When I made this site, back in 2008, Facebook was only just becoming a thing. Nobody used their real name online for anything. The internet was full of dark and mysterious strangers and hiding your true identity gave you a platform to talk about anything you wanted. We were never spewing vitriolic hate on here, but all of the original team were female. Even though it was just five years ago, nobody wanted to listen to what girls had to say about heavy music. So we all hid behind silly usernames. I picked mine after a Buffy marathon – it was Giles’ nickname when he was at university and dabbling in the occult. Others had song names, or witty puns. They were all ways of giving ourselves a voice.

Now I’m 22 years old and my voice is pretty loud. I’m still keeping the email address for the time being until I can hook up a new one to my accounts and clear some of the correspondence on it. And this is just step one in TBO’s latest reinvention. We’ll be looking shit hot by the end of the summer.

xoxo – Robyn

Harboured – For The Heart’s Still Beating

Harboured are a hardcore band from the city of Cork in Ireland. Formed in early 2012, they’ve been doing quite a few things. Their first gig was supporting Deez Nuts in their own hometown. They’ve been playing quite a few shows around Ireland. And they’ve been recording this EP. It all sounds very impressive, but For The Heart’s Still Beating is a little more pedestrian than that. At least, to begin with. Intro ’16 Ways To Start A Fight’ is quite fun, if rather typical of the genre with its sampling of cult 90s action films – in this case, Leon. It’s got your regular tough guy lyrics, your chugging hardcore riffs and a few gang vocals thrown in for good measure – everything that you’d expect, and although it’s not exactly ground breaking, it at least sounds pretty good. Then breaking into ‘The Bold, The Brave, The Free’ and it just gets boring. Hardcore is meant to be short and snappy, but the track goes on for at least a minute longer than it should. The breakdown is okay, as is the one in ‘Devastator’, but that’s all they are – there’s hardly any variation between the two, just a few gang vocals tossed over some chug-chug riffs and neither are really wanting to make me get down into the moshpit.

But this is an EP of two halves. Ignoring the painfully cliché ‘Kids Who Play Contra’, it finally gets into its stride with ‘Better Off Betrayed’. The opening feels a little bit nu-metally, but in the kind of nostalgic, joyful way, and the verses capture that anger and frustration that the other tracks only claim to. There’s some quick injections of melody and a certain sense of confidence that is actually validated here. It’s still a minute longer than it should be, and the longest track on the EP – but that’s to accommodate a pretty meaty breakdown with some fantastically rumbly bass. ‘DDT’ pays tribute to the hardcore bands of old in its simple approach and works really well. And then closer ‘Hang Your Head’ takes cues from early Rise Against with some great riffs and some posi elements.

If Harboured can draw from the latter half of this EP when writing their next release, they’ll potentially have some brilliant stuff on their hands, but they need to learn where to avoid the cliché and where to exploit it to its full potential rather than wallowing in it.

2.5 out of 5 high fives!

J-Pop Sunday – LiSA

Singer/Songwriter LiSA is the focus of this week’s J-Pop Sunday. I’ll be honest; I had originally planned to fill this edition with nothing but photos of her, each coupled with the caption “Gosh she’s pretty…” However, I didn’t believe that my editor – who is also very pretty – would approve [Editor’s note: Flattery will get you nowhere, Kaito!], thus at the last minute I had to start again and make sure that I write something that mentions her music.

Gosh, she’s pretty…

Quick Guide:
Act Name: LiSA
Real Name: Risa Oribe (織部里沙)
Years Active: 2010 – Present
Genre: Pop Rock
Notable Tracks: Oath Sign (2011), Rock-Mode (2012), Jet Rocket (2012), Crossing Field (2012)

So, the music, we need to focus on the music, not mindless, uninteresting comments about how pretty she is, or how cool she is. A live performance of “Rock-Mode” from the 2012 album “Lover ‘S’ Mile” should be a nice way to kick things off.


Gosh, she- NO! FOCUS! LiSA performs “Rock-Mode” at the Hibya Outdoor Theatre in Tokyo.

LiSA’s solo debut is an interesting tale: It can be traced back to the 2010 anime series “Angel Beats”. In the series a fictional band called “Girls Dead Monster” exists and LiSA provided the voice for one of the vocalists in the fictional band, Yui – Although only when singing. As the series grew more popular CDs featuring the fictional band and LiSA’s character were released, one of which – an album called “Keep The Beats!” – even reached number 6 in Japan’s Oricon chart! With this success, LiSA took her opportunity at a solo career and in April 2011 LiSA released a mini-album: “Letters to U”.

The songs featured on “Letters to U” were composed by a mixture of major artists, independent composers and LiSA herself while LiSA wrote the lyrics for each song. “Letters to U” reached number 14 in the charts. The success of “Letters to U” lead to LiSA’s first solo single “Oath Sign” and her first international performance – at the Anime Festival Asia in Singapore – later that year. “Oath Sign” reached number 5 in the charts and was used as the opening these song to the 2011 anime series “Fate/Zero”.


LiSA performs “Oath Sign” in Singapore. Complete with adorable Engrish to warm up the crowd.

LiSA released her first full album “Lover ‘S’ Mile” in February 2012, which peaked at number 7. “Lover ‘S’ Mile” contained 13 tracks – including “Oath Sign”, “Rock-Mode” and my personal favourite “Jet Rocket” – with most of the tracks on the album written by LiSA herself. In August LiSA released a second single “Crossing Field” which peaked at number 5, went gold and was used as the opening to yet another anime series “Sword Art Online”. (She just can’t escape the world of anime, can she?)


A clip from the video for “Crossing Field”.

This month saw the release of LiSA’s third single. “Best Day, Best Way” which has yet again peaked at number 5. (I’m not making these numbers up, honest!) But it does seem as though she’s finally moving away from having to associate with popular anime franchises in order to sell her music. Personally, I’m predicting big things for LiSA. Why? Just a hunch to be honest. However, she has already struck a chord with certain portions of the market (even if it is just those who love to shop in Akihabara) and she has started to extend her audience towards a more mainstream market. And to be honest, I don’t see any reason for the mainstream market to not love her.

We’ll finish this week’s J-Pop Sunday with my favourite song from LiSA: “Jet Rocket”. It’s uplifting, catchy and you’ll want to sing along.


Gosh, she’s pretty…

And LiSA, if by some miracle you’re reading this, all I’m saying is that I’m single and I make a fantastic bacon sandwich. So…Yeah…Just putting that out there.

Until next time!