Customer Reviews

Hearts of Hoodlums [Explicit]

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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This album, the sophomore effort by Whole Wheat Bread, finally establishes them as a band. While they were okay before, they had lousy CD recordings and a generic sound. What do I mean? "Minority Rules" was essentially a CD with rap songs and punk songs. Some of them would not be out of place on a Green Day album while others would be more at home on the next Ludacris CD. Here we see the two sounds actually coming together, and instead of punk songs and rap songs we see "dirty south punk rock" as they like to call it. There is essentially no more mediocre skate punk on this CD, which is a welcome change because whenever I saw WWB live, any of the three times, they seemed a lot more rap-energy charged than the recording did.

The punk influence comes from the blasting drum beats, the bass driven melodies, and the guitar riffs/licks/solos by Abraham. The rap influence comes from the spoken word vocals, the spread out and unexpected percussion, and the addition of urban style lyrics. (And yes, that include the n word, unfortunately). The best example of this fusion is my favorite song, Lower Class Man, which begins with a bass riff over simplistic travis barker style drumming, but the lyrics are obviously written in rap fasion as the song begins with the line "look at me I've got money"

The only issue with this CD is the length, and I'm not saying it's too short, but WWB leaked more than half these songs to the fans through myspace over the last two years while they were establishing Will Frazier as their bassist and finishing up the album. The only songs on this CD that I hadn't heard before were "Blood stains and Bite marks," a surprisingly deep loveish song that is actually pretty good, "New Age Southern Baptist" which is funny but short and could be considered filler, and "Catch 22" which is insanely catchy and one of the best songs. Three songs out of twelve isn't a lot though, which is why originally when all the songs were offered before the release I thought maybe there were 15 or so songs on the CD, but alas, no, I paid 10 bucks for three new songs.

Now obviously, if you haven't been keeping up with WWB's myspace, then this is well worth your money, because it's a great CD that shows a band that is finally finding their sound. There are absolutely no bad songs and every one is memorable for being unique in its own way, something a lot of artist fail to do. With all the stuff going on in this band's life/career, it took four years almost for this to finally hit the shelves, but from the looks of it it was well worth it.

Also, if you ever get the chance to see these guys live do it, they are amazing and highly energetic.

My friends and I were extremely excited to see what developed as these guys went on and grew musically. I'd seen them touring with Streetlight Manifesto and Reel Big Fish and I fell in love with their flawlessly executed pop punk. They had everything done right! The hooks, the verses, everything was in place for a perfect album aside from a few [missing] intros.

Well, I put off getting this album for a few days because, although I promised it as a Christmas gift to my best friend, I was afraid it wasn't going to be what he or I hoped. I'd listened to a couple of tracks on their myspace page and I can't say I had high hopes.

A few bridges really put me off, but I looked past that. As a previous review said, it has more rap energy, but for the most part, it still shows as the same band. The whole album has an upbeat vibe of sorts to it as well, which I really enjoyed. Musically, it keeps me interested and the style varies a bit, which is nice. It felt like it was over too quickly though. There are also a few hidden more modern punk / pop punk gems in this album. (Lower Class Man is a favorite!) I've got to say, I'd love to see these guys again and see how they've changed.

I recommend this album, even for people who fell in love with the pop punk three piece, because even if their direction has changed, they're still damn good at what they do.

"Hearts of Hoodlums" is an excellent album. I've been a fan of Whole Wheat Bread for a while now, but I think this album really brings them to a different level. It's much better than I was expecting, and I mean that in the best way possible. My personal favorite tracks so far are, "Bombs Away," "Throw Your Sets Up," "Girlfriend Like This," "I Can't Think," and "Ode 2 Father."