The Mazlows - Leaving Town

After releasing a handful of singles over the past few years, The Mazlows released their debut album, titled “Community Locker” last year. The Lakewood-born quartet brings fourteen tracks of energetic pop punk that never strays too far into the urgent, frenetic pace of hardcore, but instead recalls all those songs that graced — some might say plagued — the soundtracks of teen comedies circa 2002.

Community Locker owes some of its sound to a kind of music that definitely peaked twenty years ago. But it’s a genre we can look back upon fondly. In terms of listenable radio hits, pop punk was the only available option during an era soaked with the soulless demon sweat of rap metal.

The themes on Community Locker are familiar: girls, love, longing to leave your home town, late nights and that feeling of youth beginning to fade away. The soaring guitar leads are present along with the palm-muted rhythm guitar, mildly snotty vocals and wild man drumming

The lead single “Leaving Town” is another great example of this, and was a great choice for a single, as it shows a lot of the various musical elements and influences found on the record as a whole.