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Well it helps if you’re best mates with Pete Wentz and you get Patrick Stump to champion your cause. Or does it? Supporting Fall Out Boy is unlikely to get you any new fans but then, when you’re signed to DacayDance Label what is a band to do?

What they’ve done is carry on regardless and released a new album, that is attracting fans from afar with the Myspace ode, ‘New Friend Request’ making the OST of Snakes On A Plane; definitely one for the teenagers with the computer keyboard noise sample and references to ‘top eight’.

Visit the new video sharing site for Fly and watch Gym Class Heroes’ video for ‘Papercuts’

The opener, ‘The Queen And I’ is a Latin-flavoured warning about excessive alcohol consumption. Ricky Martin would have a big hit with it and ‘Clothes Off’ (featuring Mr. Stump) is their rap to Jermaine Stewart’s eighties pop-disco classic ‘We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off’. While on the subject of Patrick ‘All over the Internet’ Stump, he did a live solo vision of the Ne-Yo hit ‘So Sick” on Jo Whiley’s show a few months ago when they were in London. For a Fall Out Boy, he’s got quite a soulful voice and certainly knows how to sing.

So while we’re at it, they call in some help on ‘7 Weeks’ with the singer from The Academy Is… and the funky ‘Biter’s Block’ features Speech (of Arrested Development). The kids’ chorus on ‘Biter’s Block’ make it sound like ‘The Wall’, which is not good for me. Clearly not adverse to the concept album as the School/Playground is their comfort zone as in ‘Scandalous Scholastics’.

My favourites apart from ‘Clothes Off’ and ‘New Friend Request’, is the ‘boy next door’ beat poet rap of the ‘Sloppy Love’, where front man Travis McCoy pretends to be the awkward geek school kid (a Fall Out Boy theme?).

The live instruments sound good and apparently they are excellent live. Today is the last date of their ‘Jerry’s Kids Short Bus Tour 2006’ (Jilians in Las Vegas if you’re in Sin City) and then they’ve got separate gigs with the odd trio of Hot Hot Heat, The Bamboozle Left, Matisyhu(!) before a big November tour with The All-American Rejects.

I haven’t mentioned the Hectic gripe of covers recently but this has an excellent cover and the CD is a great follow-up to The Papercut Chronicles and you don’t have to have a ‘I <3 Travis’ friendship tattoo or be Samuel L. Jackson to see the cross-over potential of Gym Class Heroes. Hip hop purists might approve, but don’t be as cruel as school children, give them a listen.

Reviewed: Gym Class Heroes — As Cruel As School Children (DecayDance Records) Release date: 4th Sept 2006 (UK)
Tracklisting:
1 1st Period: The Queen And I (3:14)
2 2nd Period: Shoot Down The Stars (3:38)
3 3rd Period: New Friend Request (4:14)
4 4th Period: Clothes Off! (3:55)
5 Lunch: Sloppy Live Jingle Pt. 1 (1:52)
6 6th Period: Viva La White Girl (3:53)
7 7th Period: 7 Weeks (3:51)
8 8th Period: Its OK, But Just This Once (3:10)
9 Study Hall: Sloppy Love Jingle, Pt. 2 (1:01)
10 10th Period: Biters Block (3:48)
11 Yearbook Club: Boys In Bands Interlude (0:59)
12 12th Period: Scandalous Scholastics (4:17)
13 13th Period: On My Own Time (Write On!) (4:42)
14 Detention: Sloppy Love Jingle Pt. 3 (2:15)

Links:
www.gymclassheroes.com
www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/jowhiley
www.naradamichaelwalden.com
Snakes on a Plane “What’s that film about?” Andy Townsend (talkSPORT, September 2006)