You have to almost feel badly for Controller.Controller. They’re sort of dancepunk in that you can dance to their music, and it’s got lots of hard and fast guitar riffs and all, but they aren’t really a whole lot like !!! or the Rapture. But because the dancepunk association has been made—and to be fair, the band doesn’t seem to mind—they now have the dubious distinction of being the last to hop on a sinking ship. Hilarious, considering they apparently sat on their musical ideas for two years—imagine if they’d released History in 2002.

I say I’d only almost feel bad for the Toronto band, though, because despite the decline and fall of dancepunk, Controller.Controller is set to survive the wreckage unscathed. Just as bands like Goldfrapp simultaneously killed and saved electroclash by saving the best elements and merging them with something else, Controller.Controller takes the central spirit of dancepunk and actually does something different. There’s definitely more punk in the mixture, for example; the heavier riffs and insistent drumming make this an altogether more aggressive sound. And maybe I’m just biased, but snarling female vocals sound way cooler than hipper-than-thou whiny male vocals.

In a year where !!! and Radio 4 release disappointing and terrible albums respectively, it’s fair to say the kids will move on to the next big thing. Hopefully, some of them will look to Controller.Controller instead. Go catch them live; as good as the recordings are, I hear the shows are incendiary.