Bayside: The Walking Wounded : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Blame it on Green Day. Ever since Billie Joe and Co. released 2005's epic American Idiot, the trend in pop punk has been to pile it on rather than strip it back. New York's Bayside may not have the name recognition of neo-maximalists like My Chem, Fall Out Boy and Panic -- sadly, they're best known for the 2005 tour-bus crash that killed drummer John "Beatz" Holohan. That may change thanks to their fifth disc. Bayside remain a punk band, but The Walking Wounded runs on chugging Metallica guitars and big rock production values. An over-the-top thrash riff powers the title track, as singer Anthony Raneri wails, "Scientists, they couldn't fix me/I'm so tired of getting out of bed." The first single, "Duality," which has the makings of a radio hit, mines a similar vein of despair, perhaps born of the band's tragic accident: "You're the flame that burns me/So I know that I'm still alive." If this is Wounded, Bayside will be scary when they reach full strength.