WATCH YOUR STEP is:
Leo - Vocals | Toti - Guitar | Cionka - Guitar | Stefano - Drums
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BLUNT Issue #75
World's Appreciated Kitsch [Greece]
Punk Rock Review [USA]
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Rave Magazine
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WATCH YOUR STEP - Taking You Down With Me II
Blistering old school hardcore from recent tourists Watch Your Step from Italy, this is a re-release of their 2007 album, repackaged as a special tour edition with two unreleased tracks. If you didn't know they were Italian it would be easy to think it was just another American band, with their flat out thrashy guitars, powerful backing vocals and bucketloads of attitude. Despite that, it works, and Taking You Down With Me II rips at your skull with ferocious intensity. In future, I'd love to cop the hammering with an Italian voice ringing in my ears.
7 / 10
Review by: Michael Atkin
WATCH YOUR STEP - Taking You Down With Me II
To start with, this is not a new Watch Your Step record.
It's just the Australian edition of the "Taking Down With Me" album that came out about a year and a half ago by the Italy / Brasil based label Hurry Up Records.
Pee Records from Australia, one of the most hard working hardcore / punk labels of the country, took the licence from Hurry Up and released this awesome record in time for the Watch Your Step Australian tour that took place some weeks ago.
"Taking Down With Me II" includes all 13 songs of the 'original' record, plus 2 bonus ones, previously unreleased (one of them by the way will be featured in the CD compilation that will accompany the new issue of Keep It Real fanzine...), and a slightly different artwork.
For those that are not aware of the Watch Your Step fame, well, you have to check 'em out definitely, they are undoubtedly one of the best bands that came out of Italy the last years.
Their uncompromising hardcore style with street punk and rock 'n' roll influences is catchy as hell, while their 80s hardcore touch and cool attitude is reminiscent of the good ol' days of the scene.
They were formed 3 years ago in Florence and since then they have managed to achieve so many things like doing European, Brazilian and Australian tours, plus putting out awesome releases.
If you like hardcore / punk in the vein of Negative Approach, SSD, Floorpunch, American Nightmare and even old Justice, then this is your thing!
By the way, Leo, WYS' singer, is responsible for the awesome hardcore website Save Your Scene.
Watch Your Step, Yo!
WATCH YOUR STEP - Taking You Down With Me II
Basic hardcore punk rock with only two songs going over two minutes and each song is a fast-paced punk slugfest, geared toward the group's angry young male fan base. The album's speedy kinetic energy and lyrical content indicate a large Hatebreed influence. Watch Your Step, gives their compositions the New York City treatment, meaning there are mosh-ready breakdowns and an overall heaviness that is present in most hardcore punk these days. I enjoy the energetic gang vocals on “Take you down with me”. Otherwise there isn’t much to this album that stands out from the rest of the hardcore community. A majority of the songs are laced with predictable hooks, but there are a few stand out songs worth checking out such as “Not Your Friend”, “Your Golden Rule”. The best song on the album, “War More Than Peace” is just fast as hell down your throat with thrash power riffs that you can’t stop from getting your blood pumping. Overall “Taking you down with me II” is good, not great, but well worth checking out.
Review by: Jonny Taint
WATCH YOUR STEP - Taking You Down With Me II
Italy’s Watch Your Step isn’t writing the most brilliant stuff around, but they sure know the ins and outs of a good, fast, straightforward American hardcore song.
If you dig on bands like Internal Affairs, Lights Out and Blue Monday, you probably know what you’re getting on Taking You Down with Me II. The album is actually an Australian tour reissue of their 2007 full-length of the same name with a few extra bonus tracks.
Though these riffs and melodies have been heard before, they’re delivered with enough energy to get by and a really precise ability. Watch Your Step’s lyrical topics aren’t exactly a full stage dive ahead of anything that hasn’t already been previously discussed, but that chugging riff that follows the “talking shit behind my back” line in “Empty Moves” is just incredibly well-placed. I’m not even sure what the guy means when he yells “You’re burning bridges but I’m here to take it back” in the title track, but it’s pretty fun anyway.
Finishing off the album is a really punchy recording, helping Watch Your Step’s Taking You Down with Me II come off as a derivative but pretty effective 20 minutes of hardcore.
3 / 5
Review by: Brian
WATCH YOUR STEP - Taking You Down With Me II
Who Goes There?: Hailing from Florence, Italy, Watch Your Step play hardcore for themselves first and the world second. How Goes It?; Taking You Down With Me is a more than solid compendium of short and sweet hardcore tracks that never top three minutes, yet still pack a punch. Filled with Italian riffs that would sound at home in old NYC, this release puts the pedal to the metal from start to finish, leaving you spent and your hardcore fix satisfied for a week. Sounds Like: Internal Affairs / Gorilla Biscuits / Outbreak
3.5 / 5
Review by: Patrick Perrier
WATCH YOUR STEP - Taking You Down With Me II
Watch Your Step, to coincide with their Australian tour, have released this special ‘Australian Tour Edition’ version of their debut album. But, to ensure you don’t feel they’re being creatively lazy, comes the inclusion of two recently recorded tracks, unreleased until now. It’s all parcelled in cynical marketing, and makes a mockery of the ethics such inhabitants of their genre are supposed to show. Whatever happened to the DIY attitude that so endeared this scene? In it for the fun only and bollocks to the corporate fascists? Still, got to move with the times so they say. All in all this record breaks no moulds. It’s just further evidence of what can be done really. Which is no bad thing. If it aint broken don’t fix it kinda safety shot. Heavy hardcore with a passionate thrum. Mosh pit appeasing is standard. An album worth owning even though you may not play it a lot.
2 / 5
Review by: Alan Baillie
WATCH YOUR STEP - Taking You Down With Me
Watch Your Step must be one of the hottest bands out of Italy right now. Last year they sold 500 copies of their demo in just a few months. After the demo they started writing and recording Taking You Down With Me. This full length contains fourteen songs in roughly eighteen minutes. You can hear it in the pissed off and heavy sounding old school hardcore that Watch Your Step is influenced by both old bands such as SS Decontrol and Negative Approach and modern bands such as Internal Affairs and No Turning Back. So expect fast and pissed off hardcore with some breakdowns. Both the lyrics and the music are above average, but not all songs are that powerful. The production sounds solid, only the artwork isn’t too special this time. Overall I would say this record is nice but not nice enough to make it to my playlist frequently. I do think Watch Your Step has potential but a full length is a bit too big a step if you ask me. I am curious how they will develop on their next release.
3.5/5
