Record Label: 6131 Records
Genre: Punk/Hardcore
Band Link: link
Buy on Amazon.com link

The first thing that I noticed about Permanent’s album was the album cover. It looked like something that you would find on a Ween album. I thought, “This album is either going to be really emo or really folky. And then the first song punched me in the teeth.

Permanent try to mix fast punk rock fury with a slower hard rock edge. Some of the songs remind me of bands like Thrice or Thursday but a lot faster…more like a more rock version of Good Riddance. Yeah, that’s it.

The songwriting on “Sink/Swim” is very introspective and depressing and the rest of the music takes a key from that which gives the album a dark and dangerous feel to it. It’s raw yet well polished. My only problem with Permanent would be that if not for the lyrics in the CD booklet, it would be hard to understand what they were yelling about at times.

Reflective of the album title, “Sink/Swim” manages to take polar opposites and pull them together somehow and make them work.

Bottom Line: Dark punk rock with a melodic hard rock flavor.
Notable Tracks: Sidestepping, Can’t Settle, Virtue of Vices
Overall Rating: