Belvedere - Fast Forward Eats the Tape (CD)

All Music Guide

The fourth album by giddy Calgarybased poppunks Belvedere trumps their earlier efforts, not by dumbing down their already pretty dumb (in the Ramones sense of the word) brand of highvelocity, lowimpact punk'n'roll, but by upping their incipient melodic skills and perhaps counterintuitively also adding just a hint more metal to their sound. Perhaps it's just their shared Canadian heritage, but listening to a big, brash and unashamedly poppy single like "Closed Doors," one thinks of Sloan's increasing fascination with '70s pop metal. It's not like songs like "All About Perspectives" and "Slaves to the Pavement" sound that much like the great past hits by the Sweet or '70s cult faves Candy, but that they have a similar mix of poppy choruses, big guitar riffs and inescapable velocity. Belvedere's earlier records were subSum 41 poppunkbynumbers, but Fast Forward Eats the Tape shows what the band is capable of.

- Stewart Mason, All Music Guide