“Buy it? now!” Album Review: Jetplane Landing - Once Like A Spark

With the release of their second full length album comes proof of how far Jetplane Landing have progressed over this last year. First album “Zero for Contact” was an impressive debut by any standards, but this time JPL have really pushed their limits and shown us what they’re capable of. As front-man Andrew Ferris says, they’re “not just fucking around”.

With the complete creative freedom that comes from managing their own record label, they have purposefully set out to stretch the boundaries of their sound and produce something new and different. And it works. “Once Like A Spark” manages to strike a near perfect balance between heaviness and melody. Furious driving guitars and monster riffs are intertwined with quieter, more subtle moments, to create a varied and powerful album. From the exploding onslaught of guitars on opening track “The Violence” or the schizophrenic “Conventional Thought”, to the rough beauty of “Brave Gravity” and “Tethered By All That We Know”, the listener is carried by an intensity and emotion rivaling that of a live performance.

Lyrics are fresh, catchy, and sung with limitless energy and certainty; whether delivered at full volume on songs such as “The Strength of Our Conviction” or more softly as evident on the wistful “Do it… Now”. With influences ranging from Fugazi to Rage Against The Machine to Jimmy Eat World, it’s no wonder that their sound refuses to fit easily under one specific category. No matter - just think of it as, essentially, punk rock at its most punchy and compelling. Buy it… now!

© Glasswerk 2003