Spirits aflame and playing like their lives depend on it!
THE MISTAKES – Die Laughing – album review by Steve Midwinter of Personal Punk (sometimes personal – (nearly) always punk)
THE MISTAKES have been a thing for seventeen years and I’m only just discovering them? I need to get out from under this rock more. The Poole, Dorset crew formed in 2009 and this record, 'Die Laughing' is their fifth studio album, the follow-up to 2023s 'A Good Hill To Die On' (mental note: listen to A Good Hill To Die On).
I bet these are killer live. I can see them now, a non-stop fireball of raucous energy exploding off the stage. Right from the off, as ‘Battle’ kicks in with a rollicking, BOUNCING SOULS charge, all street-punk vocals, runaway solos, busy bass and lead-guitar-as-chorus, the spectacle of a thrilling live band comes into sharp focus. Even the teensy ska-punk touches work; the structure of ‘Elon’ is ska-esque, the vocal delivery in kissing distance, but it’s really just a rousing punk singalong with all the hooks. ‘No End In Sight’ too has that mouthy ska delivery but is otherwise a bass-dominated anthem for the ages. I’ll concede, you’ll hear actual ska-punk in ‘The Pit’ but it ain’t obnoxious and it’s mixed with gang-shout-riddled, DESCENDENTS-ish fun.
Where THE MISTAKES really excel though, is on energised anthems like ‘Life’s Too Short’, and the straight-in punk bounce of ‘Think It Over’, but then ‘Sons’ verges on hardcore speed, ‘Get Cancelled‘s choppy guitars and meaty rhythm section back up Colin Jerwood-style vocals, and ‘Have A Nice Day‘s blaring blast is tempered by a haunting sample. It’s worth pointing out here that the bass really steps up to the plate; thrilling throughout, it’s meaty, dynamic, and never more so than on highlight ‘Seams’ and the storming ‘Zero’. Finally, there are a couple of songs that break up the propulsion: ‘Ready For Hell‘s cello and piano augment the heartfelt delivery on this surprisingly touching acoustic moment, but they save the real wildcard for last. ‘With It And For It’, an audacious experiment in vocal/piano musical theatre, morphs into a rambunctious, celebratory mess of carnival-ska. Both weird and joyous, you may raise an eyebrow, but trust me, it’ll win you over.
The CD, while being a neat little digipak, doesn’t include the lyrics. (NB: The coloured vinyl LP does!) Fair enough. I probably wouldn’t be able to read them anyway, at least not without some kind of torch/magnifying glass combo. Thankfully, you can access the lyrics, complete with song notes, on their Bandcamp page. So do they pull their weight? Hell, yes. I mean, I’m all about the back story, and the lyrics are canny, balancing fist-waving righteousness with mature, nuanced takes on complex subjects. That said, their ‘meaning of life’ song, ‘Life’s Too Short’, carries a simple message that goes something like: ‘do nothing or live it to the full. It’s your choice, but you have to own it‘.
The baitingly-titled ‘Get Cancelled’ holds up a mirror to hypocrisy and lazy posturing in the face of a world heading for hell. In the song notes, Shane from the band writes: “Life is so fucking hard for so many people right now, the world is getting worse. No one is offering solutions, everyone is just crying at each other online“, before he ends with “It’s rubbish, everything sucks, do something to change it or keep your wanky little opinions to yourself. Start a fire or fuck off.” Ya gotta love it.
‘Have A Nice Day’ details the dark impulses most people have but rarely speak aloud (“Or when you/Get an urge to shout In a library/Or lock everyone inside/And throw away the key/Then just torch it/Just fucking burn it completely“), and lines of gritty poetry thread throughout: “Your eyes still shine like diamonds, Mine are dead and dull like coal, Your spirits still aflame with youth, My soul is dead and I’m old” before declaring “They say time heals all wounds, But it also kills all feeling.” Tasty stuff.
Once again, whatever the style, if the songs are good and the whole is injected with passion and intensity – a band playing like their lives depend on it – they’re already home. THE MISTAKES feel like a gang, with close bonds and a burning desire to just fucking do it. If you need a comparison, THE FILAMENTS will do, but whatever, this album is an absolute belter.
Released July 31st 2026 on LP, CD and digital by Engineer Records, NBQ Records (UK), Scene Police Records (Ger), Sell The Heart Records (US) and High End Denim Records (Can). There is also a limited run of cassettes from Cats Claw Records (UK) and Coffin Curse Records (US).
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