 Artwork from Infinite Strength Records I hate having to do this, having to review a release by a band I was deeply involved in, because it's never going to end good. You know I'm gonna say that it sucks! LOL I mean, I devote my time, come up with the drum parts, help develop the guitar riffs, give the songs a structure (sometimes even inspiring and contributing song lyrics and ideas), give the band a solid place to practice for free, record and mix endless hours of rehearsals and spin them into MP3's that nobody listens to, and for all that work do you think I'd get a shout out or some sort of acknowledgement as to my contribution to the band or to the songs now comprised of a CD that they want me to review? Nope, not one concilitary word... hahaha Oh well. It's great to have such amazingly good friends in your life, right? So with that in mind, let's get into this release from Lean 13 called Drinking In The Parking Lot. Ugh. A terrible title but apt for this group of lazy borrachos. And the cover photo was taken in front of The Dive bar too... LAME!! 🤢 I tried to pawn this CD off on Bob to review like I did the last time this situation came up, but all he turned in was his usual "this is terrible the demos recorded in the front room sound better" BS and in this case I'm inclined to believe him. I mean, this CD, its well recorded and all that, mix is a bit bass/drum heavy, but whatever, but everything on here sounds terribly slow and uninspired, almost forced. It's sterile. There's no "pop", no feeling of life, no excitement, except for Hey Where You From? - that song came out surprisingly good - it rips, but everything else on here? Meh. Plus the Bingo Billy thing bothers me a lot. All the drum tracks on here were played by Bingo Billy (RIP) but you'd never know that by what's written on the liner notes inside of the CD. It says the drums were played by the new guy Scott but I know that's not the case. Why the lie? No idea. Bingo Billy was a member of Lean 13 when he died (he replaced me) and why they didn't think to Honor their deceased ex-bandmates last musical contribution to this world and our little scene here in Vegas is mind blowing but whatever. That's on them, not me. And I'm not gonna get into the whole "these are S.F.T. songs" debate because there's no debate on it - they are! LOL I was in S.F.T. long enough to know that 80% of the songs on ths release are previous S.F.T. songs, songs that were played live and everything, songs going all the way back to 2014 (I got the practice MP3's to prove it! 😂) so again, why the band didn't give credit where credit was due to their friends and previous bandmates Tom and Brian, aka The Jones Brothers in the album credits is mind blowingly weak. Ugh. These assholes... I love them! 🤣🤣🤣  Courtesy of Infinite Strength Records Speaking of Love, I love hearing other drummers try to play my drum lines. They never do it right. I can play theirs all day perfectly but they can never cover mine, and I wish Bingo Billy was still around so I could rib him on how badly he played all my drum lines on this CD - except for the song Masturbation Is Murder. I don't know where that one came from. It's an actual new song I know nothing about... ha ha I've been listening to this CD on repeat ad nauseum and can't find the silver lining on this dark cloud of musical desperation and total and complete dick your friends over weaksauce. All I can see is the missed potential in all of these songs and all I can hear is the "what could of been" all over this release from Lean 13. I'm not saying it's not good, maybe it is, I dunno, all I'm saying is that I don't like it and I don't think I'll be listening to it more than I have to. I don't think it's very good at all. It's amateurish. It's high school backyard kegger party level of musical aspirations, which is fine and dandy if you're some stupid kid with patches sewn all over your clothing and spouting off stupid shit like "Up da Punx" while hanging out at Cash 4 Chaos and posing. If you're that kid you'll like this CD, but if you're old enough to vote or buy booze, well then maybe you won't... ha ha ha ha It's pretty "Punk Rock"... whether that's a good thing or not is entirely up to you and your maturity level. 😎 PS. At the beginning I said I was the wrong guy to review this, but to paraphrase Darby Crash a little bit, they wanted a onethirtyeight.org review, they got it. Hope it was everything you expected and less! Salud! ☠ Available from Infinite Strength Records by clicking here. Digitally available on Spotify by clicking here. You can buy the Drinking In The Parking Lot album on Amazon Japan by clicking here. Like Lean 13 on Facebook by clicking here. Follow the band on Instagram by clicking here. Listen to a couple of the early demos from the album on the Lean 13 Bandcamp page by clicking here.
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