I don’t know if there’s a secret pact going on with punk acts where they all decide to sound so similar to one other. Banner Pilot’s new album Heart Beats Pacific adds little differentiation to the increasingly bland flavor of punk rock. The chord progressions feel as though they were taken out of old Lagwagon and Lawrence Arms tracks. The vocals sound just good enough to be better-than-average, and everything behaves in precisely the way its supposed to. Ultimately, some teenage snowboard punk will jam out to this album while hitting jumps, but Heart Beats Pacific falls into the punk rut that simply doesn’t allow the band to do anything more than turn up the amps and blast three chords.

(Fat Wreck Chords, PO Box 193690, San Francisco, CA 94119)