The Gamits - Endorsed By You LP - Yellow Vinyl (/200)

Snappy Little Numbers / Fail Harmonic / Bearded Punk (2025, Reissue)

Endorsed by You was originally released back in the year 2000 and was The Gamits debut full length.  I know this, because i looked it up.  I've never been all that familiar with The Gamits.  I have a split 7" with them on it somewhere in my collection (I assumed filed under "G" or "M"), but I really don't remember it as it was part of a 7" subscription series I was in over a decade ago.  Before that I did know their name, but mostly from hanging around the Vinyl Collective message board in the mid 2000s.

Putting on this album is the first time I've heard much of anything by The Gamits.  I wasn't going in with any idea of what they sounded like, aside from the fact that I knew they were pop punk and I do have a good record by Discreature Comfort, the newer band fronted by The Gamits' Chris Fogel.  For whatever reason, despite my unfamiliarity with them, they kind of sounded like I thought they would.  Pretty good pop punk, with the occasional song or section of a song that has the sort of drumming that makes me nuts.

There's this galloping, super fast drum beat in pop punk that I most closely associate with NOFX, but creeps out into many, many bands (even ones I love like Snuff).  It's one of those things that immediately makes me tune out and think, "oh, it's this kind of pop punk."  And while that is definitely not the case for the vast majority of this Gamits record, when it does pop up, I immediately get frustrated.

And that frustration is mostly because I do like the bulk of this album.  The guitars have the big crunchy sound that I dig.  The vocals and choruses remind me a little bit of Hospital Job (though, due to when each of those bands were releasing records, it's actually the other way around).   At its core, it's a well done pop punk record.  It's just at its best when they slow things down just a bit and lean into the pop side of pop punk.  And if the occasional drum gallop isn't a weirdly specific pet peeve for you like it is for me, I think this is a record worth checking out.

The Gamits - Endorsed By You:
https://snappylittlenumbers.bandcamp.com/album/endorsed-by-you-reissue