Label: Pee Records

Verdict: A solid take on the tech-punk genre from Italian punks.  7.5/10.

Australian listeners got their first taste of Jet Market last year via Pee Records’ three-way international split.  On that outing, the Italian punks did quite admirably, even managing to outperform local favourites Burning Fiction.

On the group’s debut album Sparks Against Darkness, Jet Market continue largely where they last left off, producing a solid album with a well developed sound that is sure to find an audience both within Australia and abroad.

While Jet Market predominantly fall under the banner of tech-punk (along the same lines as groups like No Trigger and A Wilhelm Scream), the band’s sound is largely defined by their willingness to move outside the genre’s usual conventions; flourishes of both hardcore and thrash colour tracks like “My Deep Black Nights”, helping to distinguish themselves from the crowd of other similarly sounding bands.

Although the record’s title track stands alone as a definite highlight, slower songs like “You Can Always Make My Day” help break up the album and inject a degree of differentiation into proceedings.  Likewise, the careful placement of sub-minute blasts like “Don’t Say You’re Sorry, Because You’re Not” prevents the album becoming monotonous.

Given the explosion in popularity of tech-punk over the last five years or so, it would be easy to write off Jet Market as just another bandwagon jumper.  However, Sparks Against Darkness proves that this is a group that should not be dismissed so easily; sure they can play their instruments fast and well, but they display a sense of passion and an ability to craft an album (as opposed to merely writing songs) that is sorely lacking amongst so many of their contemporaries.