'Of Classic Renown' starts off with the same sort of wonderfully reminiscent garage punk rock that Titus Andronicus brought just a little while ago to critical (if not any other) acclaim. “Bring Your Own” is everything you hope for in a rock song; catchy, upbeat but not chipper, and tough without being too reminiscent of the music that your high school’s biggest meathead listened to.
For whatever reason, Hunters and Runners start doing some wild stuff vocally on the second track, “The Sims”, sounding more like they’re trying to get on the Warped Tour with pre-teens and their mothers as their audience, than an opening slot at the Rat (R.I.P). This is hardly the only change in their style during the album though; sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. “Father’s Porsche” is some pretty basic classic rock, and pretty pleasant at that. Musically they get a little off track as well, dabbling in easy listening on “I Used to be Lonely” – very reminiscent of Mike Patton thinking he can do whatever he wants because he used to be in Faith No More.
Their reggae stylings on songs such as “Baby’s Eyes” and “Badman” are not as welcome either. It sounds un-rehearsed, it sounds like your older brother’s band that he formed to meet girls. This is especially unfortunate because if every song on the album was as good as “Die”, this could have been as, if not more, successful than Titus Andronicus.
Singers Brady Oh and Liam Farrell have the abilities requisite to really rock; their voices carry emotion well, the have the power, fairly strong range. The band also knows how to play. It just sounds as if they haven’t really decided, as a group, what they want to do with all of this accumulated talent.