Good. Hi, everyone. Bthony Daytano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Amyl and the Sniffers project, Cartoon Darkness.

Here we have the third and latest album from Australian garage punk rabblerousers, Amyl and the Sniffers, a band whose buzz has become increasingly difficult to ignore with each passing year due to their electrifying live shows as well as banger singles that continue to pick up steam. Tracks like "Hertz" and "Security" and "Guided by Angels" have really managed to become modern punk anthems in a few short years, while some of the teasers in the lead up to this new album have been pretty strong, too. Most specifically, the track "You Should Not Be Doing That", which is a groovy talk-song rocker, all about rebelling against the comments, perceptions, and control of others – a topic that frontwoman Amy Taylor is the perfect conduit for as her vocals and wild lyrics really make her a force to be reckoned with.

So it's not surprising that the album's best and most impassioned moments follow suit thematically, like with the opening track "Jerkin'", which is all about telling off obsessive internet haters, or the track "Tiny Bikini", whose very snarky vocal delivery, gives us lyrics about Amy wearing whatever the hell she wants, regardless of how revealing it is or how others might view it.

Meanwhile, "Doing In Me Head" is all about dealing with the stresses that one may take on, forcing themselves to live under some societal fantasy in order to conform and get along with everyone, be that stuff around gender norms or the impending doom of climate change staring us right in the fucking face. And then the closing track reads a bunch of very snide schoolyard rhymes with Amy singing about her and the girls doing X while the boys are doing Y, and they suck and are ugly, which is probably the best vibe for a a record like this to end on, honestly.

But this is not just a record about going against the grain. There are also quite a few songs on this LP about love, the highs and low of it, as well as lust, too. And in one breath, while I appreciate Amyl and the Sniffers trying to give us a record that is versatile both emotionally and musically, the issue is the further the band strays away from making high octane garage punk, the more artistic shortcomings they expose. Like with the dreary, slow, skeletal, garage/psych rocker "Big Dreams"; this one is most definitely missing something. It's lacking on the melodic end. It doesn't really have a lot of band chemistry to speak of either.

I will admit Taylor's vocal delivery is not quite as compelling when it's dialed down as much as it is here, to where it's nearly monotone and reading is apathetic, which is a shame because Amy truly is, I think, the star of the the main draw, really the thing sonically that sets them apart from any other punk rock group out there right now, especially on "You Should Not Be Doing That" as well as "Motorbike Song", and "It's Mine", whose synced-up riffs are very black flag coded at points.

But again, when Amy and the band take a more low-key approach, the lack of standout choruses and memorable melodic ideas just becomes very apparent. Every once in a while, you have some weird ham-fisted instrumental ideas as well, like with the combination of psych rock leads and jaw harp and robot vocal passages on the closing track, which, yeah, that's a weird fit. And look, while I think the high intensity, the pure punk rock moments on this record are really what go over best. Amy Taylor's fiery delivery is not a one-to-one substitution for a memorable flow or an earworm lyric, which I say because sometimes her performances on these tracks read less like preconceived stanzas or verses, and more like she's doing some middle-of-the-road aimless free-form ramble, like on the track "Going Somewhere", which I think really could have been cut down a bit to its punchiest points.

Ultimately, I think Amyl and the Sniffers continue to be a very solid punk band, especially when it comes to their live act. But the issue with this record is the number of things the band is great at continues to be just far too narrow. And while it's certainly admirable that they threw out a lot of attempts on this new LP here at just doing something different, doing something new, doing something unexpected, little to none of these experiments really pan out all that great.

So sadly, even if this record does have a great midpoint and some standout singles, the handful of bland cuts and total misses really weigh the overall experience of the album down, which is why I'm feeling a light 6 on it.

Anthony Fantano. Amyl and the Sniffers. Forever.