Bad Mojos - I Hope You OD

Switzerland isn’t exactly the first country which comes to mind when you think about punk bands, but Bad Mojos call that land of chocolate and watches their home. Their debut album has a title with zero chill: I Hope You OD, giving you a good idea of what to expect from the trio.

Aping the sound of punk bands of the past like The Ramones means that you’re already on course to be underwhelmed when the first track kicks in. It’s typical buzzsaw chords with low, hooky vocal melodies repeated, boomed and yapped.

While it’s an imitation sound, it’s actually very enjoyable - and made digestible since the tracks barely last two minutes. ‘Commit A Crime’ ducks and dives, making you want to pop your collar and cause a fuss on your local high street. Elsewhere, ‘Diggin My Own Grave’ throws in some keyboard whirls, but that’s as mixed up as the formula gets across the 10 tracks.

Power-pop punk in the purest form, you can barely make out the words in the songs, but it’s the intense tempo set by the drums that you’re actually in it for; the primitive lines uttered are more like battle cries.

At times, such as on ‘Too Drunk’, the bass and kick drum get too much for the audio quality to convey, but again, it simply plays into the trio’s hands, lending an extra lo-fi, scuzzy feel to the whistle stop tour of their version of Swiss life.

Thuggery pervades the image of this band, and while they’ve got the tunes to back that up, whether or not they’re genuine punks is hard to tell - but at least they’re throwing themselves up as the alternative vision of what is widely regarded as a quiet, peaceful nation, so maybe they fit the bill after all.