The Belgian punk rock band Charlie Bit My Finger profiles themselves as “high school party punk rock”. Basically this comes down to the typical sound of the 90s – early 2000 years’ pop punk. If this band manages to catapult you back to crazy party vibe of the American Pie movies with their upcoming first full length record “Trapped Inside”, they’ll have done their job well. Looking at the cover with the somewhat whacky looking band on it, it looks promising.

When the music kicks off, you immediately get a feeling of recognition. The simple snappy drums, the typical fast bass and melodic guitars create the very accessible pop punk music from back in the day. When Diede begins singing, the clear vocals match perfectly with the overall package. It all sounds very well-produced, professional and actually makes me think back to the period when I listened to this kind of music. Especially the more up-tempo ‘Carry On’ reminds me of the early Blink-182 hits. Another song that really caught my attention is ‘Good or Bad’. It starts off rather slow and less heavy, but later on kicks into a higher gear, sounding more like the harder old school punk that I like. Musically they don’t bring anything new though, it all sounds like it has been done before about 10-15 years ago and honestly, maybe a bit better back then.

When you have a band name based on a silly viral video of a little kid acting funny, you’d expect hilarious nonsense lyrics. In the case of this record there seems to be more of a focus on the high school bit than on the party. The feelings, emotions and thoughts voiced throughout are most likely very recognizable for any teenager or adolescent out there. It would have been nice though if they had at least one really ridiculous party song that doesn’t even have to make sense. Most pop punk bands seemed to have at least one of those somewhere on their records to lighten the mood. I remember having a bit of a laugh in between all the quite loaded songs was nice as a bit of a breather. From what I can see on their Facebook page the band definitely comes across crazy enough to accomplish such a song successfully. They definitely would have had the room for it since this full length album barely makes it to 20 minutes long. With all those short punk rock songs, the record is over before you realize it. The music is good enough that at least another 10 minutes on top of that wouldn’t have been so bad really.

To summarize, this album is a nice little trip back to the period this form of punk was really popular. People that are into bands like 1208, Pulley, NOFX and maybe even Blink-182 could really like this little disc. For others this might be a bit too “been there, done that”. Nothing new and a bit short, but still really well done. I’d give it an overall score of 7/10.

Release date: 23/01/2016
Label: BrainFreeze Records and Snayle Records
Track list:
1. Place Your Bets
2. Carry On
3. Trapped Inside
4. Broken Dreams
5. Breaking Fences
6. Tell Me
7. Good Or Bad
8. Roots