It's always been kinda impossible to isolate the defining ethos of punk rock, but over the course of the last twenty-five years, the genre has been kicked over, dismantled and reinvented so many times that the term itself has devolved into little more than a hip euphemism for "obnoxious." In 2004, dubbing a band "punk" and walking away is, essentially, a completely meaningless exercise. There are a handful of constants-- hammering drums, loud guitars, shouting-- but the spiky essence of punk music is as vague as ever, having been long reduced to a series of cheap indicators (see black pleather jackets) and empty buzzwords.
Challenger, a trio born from hardcore bouncers Milemarker, seem stubbornly preoccupied with recapturing the piss and stomp of late-80s punk torchbearers (The Minutemen, Black Flag, Hüsker Dü), and their debut, Give People What They Want in Lethal Doses, somehow ended up sounding just as hollow and unlikely as the idea of quasi-authentic nu-punk tearing up the new millennium-- and just as cynical as The Kinks record of the sorta-same name. The problem isn't that Challenger's players (Milemarker's Dave Laney and Al Burian alternating on guitar, bass, and vocals, with Timothy Remis on drums) aren't insanely energetic, or that they're not wholeheartedly selling their hot-footed power chords, it's that their entire founding principle seems so painfully, tediously borrowed; in sticking to that ever-nebulous true-punk formula, they've abandoned their only shot at capturing an original, non-nostalgia laced sound.
Most of Give People What They Want is fairly textbook. Opener and highlight "Input the Output" pits teamed-up shouting matches against harrowing guitar solos and wildman drumming; "Unemployment" twists the same formula into a more dynamic shape, with Laney and Burian's throaty yelps bouncing off each other, vocal lines battling with guitar solos for total noise supremacy. Challenger seem confident in the weight of their assault (and rightfully so), but that comfort ultimately leads to monotony: Not too many of these tracks are especially discernable from each other. Which is fine, when you're just thrashing around your apartment in big boots-- but it's not so promising when you sit down to weigh the respective heft of Challenger's own brand of punk rock.
Challenger may punch up their songs with some exhilarating vocal harmonies and unexpected structural shifts, but in the end, they never really transcend their own love/appreciation for their legendary influences-- a choice which prevents them from making a sizable dent in the ever-flexing history of punk.
