Scratch Acid - Just Keep Eating (Review)

Scratch Acid’s debut EP (or was it mini-album) must have sold well enough for their record label Rabid Cat Records to let them do a follow up release. Now people will debate of what category their first release should belong under but no one will argue that this is an album though and through. The other thing people will no argue about this album is its drop in quality.

“Just Keep Eating” adds more songs and subgenre exploration to the bands material but it doesn’t work nearly as effectively. “Crazy Dan” is a sluggish start to the experience. Adding in strings helps but not enough. “Big Bone Lick” gives more surf flair like we heard on “Greatest Gift” but now is almost twice as long. A little breakdown of just the rhythm section helps. “Unlike Like A Baptist” is Blues influenced and even adds in a harmonica solo for better effect. “Damned For All Time” gives us an energetic horn section laden cover of the Andrew Lloyd Weber songs.

The second side is where things almost start to gel to finally start feeling like a solid Punk record. “Holes” finds someone besides Yow singing with a pounding drum section. “Albino Slug” is an solid instrumental with more added strings as heard at the beginning of the album. “Spit A Kiss” and “Cheese Plug” gives us two pretty groovy riffs and are probably the two best tracks on here. “Amicus” includes minimal lyrics but has a weird groove to it as well.

There are some unnecessary added audio samples at the beginning of “Holes” and “Spit A Kiss”. Both sides of the LP end with untitled and worthless instrumentals. The first one lasts about 30 seconds (and was clearly a garage demo) and the other goes on for over 2 minutes. These were both added onto the LP just to make the album go past 30 minutes, guaranteed. The albums production, while cleaner, also has no bite to it. Yow’s vocals seem to be mixed lower than they should be and have added effects onto of them for certain songs.

“Just Keep Eating” is a lackluster follow up to the band debut (insert length category here). For their first true blue album, its a disappointment. This would’ve served better with less songs or strictly been an EP. It still couldn’t touch the band debut but it wouldn’t have felt like the below-average album we got.

Final score: 2.5/5

Choice cuts: “Big Bone Lick”, “Ain’t That Love”, “Spit A Kiss”, “Cheese Plug”