Reviews

Casey Jones is not the hockey mask attired vigilante from TMNT, but rather an insanely fanatic straight edge side project of xJoshx from Evergreen Terrace.  Although from the pissed as fuck bent of the lyrics I get the impression that, given the chance, these dudes would be out on the streets of Florida, armed to the teeth, exacting vengeance on fakes, rumor spreaders, scene spoilers, and those who drink, do drugs, or otherwise fuck with their sensory perceptions of the real world.  And that’s kind of what ruins this for me.  These guys are pissed and full of unwarranted pride.  Hey, uh, remember when straight edge was fun?  And, uh, not terrifying? Or oddly fascist? No?  Too bad.
 
If you ignore the message (which I’m sure would piss them off) and the layout stolen straight from Strife’s In This Defiance, then you’d have a pretty solid, totally competent hardcore record with a few funny Evergreen Terrace references. But ultimately what can’t be ignored is the relentless negativity, the feeling of self-imposed isolation even within a community.  The Messenger is a product of a drive to divide and judge.  It’s a lonely record that no amount of sing alongs can cover up, and the really sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be that way.  It’s great that Casey Jones is a straight edge band and that they love being straight edge, but this record makes it seem like such a bad choice: a life of utter seriousness and constant bitter judgment.
 
And then, the crown on the corpse is the song Punch-a-size, a hard, fast, circle pit of a song that points the finger at those who point the finger.  Militant kids who have written a whole lot of songs about their group being awesome and everyone else being useless has the nerve, or the obliviousness - I’m not sure, to write “You pick your clicks(sic)/ You join your teams/ You start the fights/ you’ve fucked this scene.”  Another instance of needed to shoot the messenger.