ALBUM REVIEW: Brain Invaders – Zebrahead

Brain Invaders is the 13th studio album from Californian punk rockers ZEBRAHEAD. Over a near 25 year career they’ve seen plenty of ups and downs but they’re still going strong. Brain Invaders is an album that manages to conjure up some strong nostalgic feelings for an album released in 2019 – mainly because outside of some lyrics there’s very little that would suggest this is an album from 2019. Almost every song feels like it was pulled straight from the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and this certainly isn’t a bad thing when you consider how much great punk and pop-punk was coming out at that time. It feels like instead of trying to modernise their sound ZEBRAHEAD seem more than happy to just give us a blast from the past.

Brain Invaders gets off to a really good start with When Both Sides Suck, We’re All Winners providing a turbo charged blast of punk aggression. I Won’t Let You Down brings in their rap influences alongside a big pop-punk chorus. It’s a ridiculous track that still manages to be a lot of fun. All My Friends Are Nobodies is the album highlight sounding like it was pulled straight from a Tony Hawks Pro Skater soundtrack. It’s a really upbeat song with super positive lyrics.

The album fails to reach these dizzying heights again but there are still plenty of fun moments. You Don’t Know Anything About Me goes full ska punk bringing in the trumpets and is loads of fun whilst Ichi, Ni, San, Shi sees the band step into hardcore for one track and provides a nice surprise towards the end of the album. The whole album feels a bit like a punk rock jukebox with at least one song going into each punk sub genre. So whilst this does see ZEBRAHEAD mixing things up from song to song, a lot of the songs do end up feeling highly derivative of other bands. Do Your Worst sounds so close to being a straight up rip off of Dead by MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE.

At 45 minutes, Brain Invaders is also far too long. Cutting a few the weaker tracks would have led to a much stronger release, tightening up the album. Instead, it really loses steam in the middle. ZEBRAHEAD do try to mix things up from song to song but it still all starts to feel a little uninspired, and some of the rap influenced tracks in the middle feel clunky with some incredibly cliched lyrics.

Whilst there is quite a bit of fun to be had with Brain Invaders it does end up feeling a little bloated. Die hard fans will no doubt still love it but outside of a few songs the album does very little to pull people in. Still at this stage in their career being able to add a few new songs into their live set to keep from feeling stale is probably all ZEBRAHEAD need to do, and there’s definitely a few songs here that could become fan favourites live.

Rating: 6/10

Brain Invaders is out now via MFZB Records.

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