I have all their albums to this point and honestly would never have
called them a pop punk band. Yes, they did have a few poppyish songs but not
really enough to be called a pop punk band. I always thought of them as your
basic punk band who like singing about politics and the BS that usually goes
along with it. And How to Clean Everything is anything but pop either in my
opinion. There some pretty hard shit on there and though their following
album was not one I loved it didn't rock so hard either. But once the bass
player left the band most of that changed. He seemed to be pretty integral
with some of the softer songs. Once he left and Empires came out it was
totally different. Compare Empires to Potemkin and there is not a huge
difference. But I'll agree and say that Potemkin is much different that the
early stuff and so is Empires. Much more thrash and hard rock influenced
which I happen to think sounds great. They've come a long way and I
hope they don't spend quite so long between records this next time around. If
you havent checked out Todays Empire Tomorrows Ashes, I'm sure you have by
now, check it out. That shit rocks harder in some ways than Potemkin does.
They are both pretty hard and fast but they are each done in different ways
while getting their points across. And notice that there are no chorus or
any "songlike" qualities off any of the new stuff. All the songs are just
long diatribes of thought spat out along with the music. I think its pretty
cool.