Like Cold Rain Kills a Summer Day

Belgian pop-punks Janez Detd have been impressively prolific over the course of their career: Like Cold Rain Kills a Summer Day is their sixth full-length album in a decade, not including a large number of stand-alone singles and EPs. Especially with all this activity, it's surprising that the band isn't more well-known to the Hot Topic generation of mall punks: these 14 songs are catchy three-chord pop-punk tunes along the lines of Yellowcard or Simple Plan. Occasional hints of emo and metal creep into the album's lyrics and arrangements, but overall, songs like "Die for You" and "Breaking the Waves" are straight-up pop tunes delivered with a smile. Nikolas VanDerVeken's completely unaccented vocals have an engaging boyish enthusiasm, and if the four-piece occasionally lapses into samey, schematic post-Green Day punk, change-ups like the delightful and unexpected album-closer "Mala Vida" (sung in Spanish with a ska-inflected horn section) keep the album interesting.