New Jersey’s pop punkers Man Overboard released their newest album Heavy Love today. The record is the follow-up to their 2013 release Heart Attack. The band has been steadily putting out music since their founding in 2008, beginning with the self-released Hung Up on Nothing. Not long after their EP came out, the band signed to Run for Cover Records and released another EP Dahlia. The following year, the band released Real Talk and signed to Rise Records. While the group has cycled through a few drummers and shifted its formation to some extent during this process, they’ve also largely stayed the same. Band members and childhood friends Nik Bruzzese (vocals, bass) and Wayne Wildrick (guitar) formed the group, recruiting Zac Eisenstein (guitar, vocals, piano) and then-drummer Justin Mondschein to join soon after. There was some reshuffling of the line-up in those early years and a period where Wildrik briefly left Man Overboard, but band’s current iteration seems to be sticking. The newer members guitarist Justin Collier and drummer Joe Talarico fit seamlessly into the band’s sound, creating no disruption for this new record, which in it’s nature is full-blown pop punk.

You can hear the famed inflection in Heavy Love’s opening track “Now That You’re Home”. Bruzzese nails that almost nasal-y tone without sounding whiny and lets listeners know within the first three minutes of the record that Man Overboard is committed to the genre. As if naming their group after a Blink-182 song wasn’t enough, Man Overboard adds power-chord heavy guitar parts and call-and-response vocals to the equation. This results in the band sounding like they undoubtedly grew up listening to the founding fathers of the genre. However, no matter how committed their approach or how prolific they’ve been, the band fails to grab our attention in as memorable a fashion as Blink or New Found Glory did. The band may have earned themselves a spot on Warped, but they’re still not quite there.

Lyrically, some of Man Overboard’s new songs show real potential. One of the more infectious tracks off of Heavy Love, “Reality Check”, is a fast-paced true to form pop punk song. It’s the kind of track that you crank up and shout along to while driving. Eisenstein and Bruzzese share the mic with brilliant timing and you find yourself starting the song over for a second listen before it’s even over. “Anything” is another good one. It’s simple, short and gets to the desperate, lovesick point. There’s a Starting Line-esque feel to the quick lines and easy rhymes. That same care-bear, easy rhyme scheme comes off clumsy in other songs, but succeeds here.

The same can’t be said for “Cliffhanger”, which bats back and forth between being unimaginative and almost poignant. The vocals pair up perfectly for lines like, “Praying for the strength to try, wiping tears out of my eyes. / Watching chances pass me by as romance behind it dies,” but despite the Hoppus-DeLonge-like delivery, the sentiment of the words lands flat. It’s too heavy, even for a genre that often taps into your inner angry teenager. The song springs back to life in the very next line with a more notable lyric (“I realized I’m a natural second best and whatever is against me I’ll appear as something less”), but too much of the energy has already been lost and there isn’t much of a song to salvage.

The majority of Heavy Love is that same kind of borderline ok. The record has its catchy moments and stronger songs, but it’s an album you stream a couple times, not one you buy. The album’s problem is how ordinary it is. Trying to sound original, yet old-school amidst the pop punk/emo revival is a hard balance to strike, so it’s an understandable conundrum. However, other bands have had more success on the same road. Man Overboard’s labelmates Knuckle Puck have a similar sound and their recent single “Disdain” hits the mark that Heavy Love missed.

Perhaps it’s a timing thing. The band has been busy in the best way, so perhaps they lack the luxury of taking a couple months or a year to craft an album. Man Overboard is known for being relatively quick about releasing new music, which is an achievement, but perhaps they need to stop hammering out new EPs and spend sometime really devoting themselves to a dozen or so tracks. One unexpected thing about Heavy Love is it doesn’t turn listeners off of the band, but rather it leaves them wondering what the band will do next. Maybe practice makes perfect and they’ll get us next time?

 

-Zoe Marquedant