Saturday Reject: MadCraft – Shining Bright

“Hey, that nearly lives up to the hype!”

Tim: MadCraft describe themselves as “the superpowered pop punk band from Helsinki”, and, well, how often do you get superpowered pop punk these days? We can’t not feature it, really.

Tom: Hey, that nearly lives up to the hype! That said, for a pop-punk band, the mix feels a bit… muted.

Tim: That’s the proper music video there, as on both UMK live performances the levels were catastrophically miscalculated resulting in the vocals being almost inaudible; to what extent that affected their poor placing throughout we’ll not know.

Tom: You say that, but the main single mix sounds a bit like it’s being played through slightly broken speakers. Maybe that’s YouTube compression, maybe not, but either way it needs kicking up a notch or two.

Tim: Perhaps, but I reckon overall it’s a good track, as far as pop punk goes, and I suppose superpowered isn’t a terrible description – it’d certainly be a decent Blink 182 album track.

Tom: Ooh, that’s a backhanded compliment there.

Tim: Digging around this band, I find a lot to like, such as their excitable website that, once you’ve read to the bottom, invites you to read it all over again. There’s also their previous music video referencing various video games, such as Madtal Kombat, Madtar Hero and, well, I’ll let you guess what they renamed Super Mario Land to. What I see is a band that likes having fun, and entered the competition to have a bit more fun. Well done everyone, it’s nice when this happens. Even if it didn’t lead to victory.

Tom: Agreed.