'Part 1, first chapter!' yelps singer Aaron by way of introduction to 'Nothing's Gonna Spoil My Day Today', the album from his band Olympus Mons. On opener 'Martial Law' indie-styled guitars mix up with a punky chorus before leading into, well, more indie. The band is clearly not striving for musical originality, as already admitted in their own press, but they do have enough in them to make their music sound individual. Whether they've arrived too late to hitch a ride on the twangy guitar gravy train remains to be seen, but they're making a reasonable stab at it with 'Nothing's Gonna Spoil My Day Today'.

 The album continues in stereotypical style with 'Ok On My Own', although Aaron should again be praised for making his voice and wording easily intelligible, not falling foul of horrible slurring a la The Enemy, which will benefit the pop-singalong appeal the band seem to be aiming for. The essence of Jamie T permeates throughout the lyrics on this album, showcasing good storytelling but sadly stumbling over a fair few cliches on its way. Aarons accent also violently fluctuates between mockney and reggae stereotypes, which does exhibit vocal talent, but doesn't lend itself to providing a single musical vision for an album. Whether that is a bad thing depends on the listener's personal taste, but i found it a bit confusing at times to hear the sudden switch.

 For a band that claims to cross a fair few genres, one can't help but feeling slightly let down listening through to 'Nothing's Gonna Spoil...'. True, the fast paced and slightly funky vibes of 'Let The First Time Be The Last' are quite different to the stomping, beer glass smashing, working class heroics of 'Late Again', but on the whole this release isn't diverse enough to claim to be that stylistically challenging. And sadly, 'Late Again' does stray into "Pub Rock" territory. Which leads on to the next criticism, that a lot of this album is, essentially, completely unnecessary. At 16 tracks long, 'Nothing's Gonna Spoil...' drags on for far too long. If Olympus Mons had taken their 9 best tunes and dropped the remaining tracks, which do sometimes stray into 'filler' territory (tracks like 'Eye For An Eye' coming across as a bit dull overall), they might have shown off the songwriting rather than opting for quantity over quality. Priority could have also been given to tracks like 'Sell Me To The Wind' which is reminiscent of 'The Bitter End' era Placebo but wholly benefiting from a musical kick up the arse from Norbert (bass) and Moran (drums), and Aaron providing almost schizophrenically phrased lyrics, darting across the song like east london gunshots. Great use of piano too.

 A major musical selling point is also the integration of jazzy chord progressions and melody lines to the music, but it does end up coming across a bit hit or miss. 'Journey Chapter VII' has a great guitar section, which fits perfectly with the vocals, but the acoustic overindulgence of 'As Long As Our Feet Walk' drags on too long, with the guitar line infected with pick scrapes and fret buzzing. Authenticity when recording acoustic guitar is always welcome, but if a better take was put down, the song may have come off sounding a bit less amateurish.

 There are many reasons to like Olympus Mons, but this collection of songs doesn't really do their band justice, preferring to cram many ideas that aren't very well thought out into a space that would have easily welcomed half the tracks. More focused songwriting and a more critical culling of the pieces of the bands dynamic that don't really work may have proved to have been to their advantage. Not a bad album by any means, but not up to the standard that is required to succeed in a genre where competition is harsh, and where the fanbase is rapidly declining in favour of musical pastures new.

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