According to This Drama’s press kit, “All artistic manifestation, all social response, has it’s trigger, it’s condition, it’s motive, it’s reason for being and lasting.” Why the publicist at Deep Elm Records would choose this piece of pretentious trash for an opening line describing this particular band is incomprehensible. Maybe it is an homage to whatever professor impacted this surely struggling copy writer while he or she was studying literature at insert liberal arts college here. Maybe it’s angst at being relegated to spewing out press releases instead of creating the great American novel or groundbreaking social commentary. Whatever the motivation, it is totally out of place while attempting to describe This Drama or their debut album, San Diego XIII.

What San Diego XIII is, is a great punk rock record a la Riverboat Gamblers or The Bronx, poppy enough to sing along with but with the driving irresistible force of a fat lady rushing at a buffet line. There’s no need to get meta-artsical (I made that up) about five dudes mining what is best about SoCal Punk for a familiar, yet compelling twist on an overused and most times unfulfilling genre. They probably don’t care about their “artistic manifestation,” they just want to fucking rock. This Drama definitely makes a statement about their intentions to fucking rock on this debut, which is an as energetic presentation of angst-ey, danc-ey awesomeness as anything released by their contemporaries in recent memory. With the shortest track clocking in at 53 seconds and the longest at seven minutes, San Diego XIII delivers its medicine in small doses as well as in epic curative cocktails of meaty guitar riffs and catchy vocals with even a few handclaps thrown in for good measure. The only weak point of the album is the production, which feels too clean and separated to do justice to the raw spirit of the music. Overall, this “social response” stands out as a great example of what can happen halfway around the world (the band resides in the Canary Islands, Spain) when a group of guys get together and is “triggered” by a mutual love of an American-refined genre of music.