Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

In a way listening to South Korea’s Dead Buttons is the perfect approach to looking at the bewildering insular way that England has decided to look upon the world; without opening your heart to the many cultures that surround us, how on Earth can we possibly grow as a nation in the same way that Dead Buttons grow upon you as their album Some Kind Of Youth opens up before the Western based audiences in which the band have arguably looked upon to augment their muse and music.

The nearest thing that those born and raised before 1990 had to a culture of a different country was perhaps shrouded in the area of American imported television, the great bands that came over the airwaves across the Atlantic Ocean and the occasional offering from Europe if they were fortunate enough to have enlightened parents or schools that could cope with the intrigue of a different kind of youth.

Now with the world opening up before them, the chance to take in a band, in a sound, influenced in itself by Western culture and Rock sensibility is one that is enjoyable and verging on the groovy. It is a shame that the prospect of a nation turning its back on this kind of musical ability could jeopardise relations between those under the age of 20 for a long time to come.

Dead Button’s Some Kind Of Youth is spark driven, contagious, it offers the best of both worlds from a country that has embraced such thought and investigation into how the cultures can merge and co-exist with each other; Some Kind Of Youth is to the world what we should hope for in our young, the power of independent thought, of acceptance and of allowing the beat of a different drum to be heard, it is what makes life peaceful and booming.

In tracks such as I Don’t Need You To Let Me Down, Hangover, Strangers, the fantastic Useless Generation and the album closer Witch, Dead Buttons explore the Rock genre with precision; it is after all only to expected that they would succeed given their open mindedness and tolerance to a branch of music that might have seemed alien at the time of its foothold into Korean culture but now is as sought after as freedom.

A powerful album, one of pounding art, Some Kind Of Youth have spoken and they deserve to be heard.

Ian D. Hall