Honah Lee

The Honnah Lee half of this split is engrossed in the same poppy punk culture of The Plurals, but is embroiled in the world of catchy hooks that made bands like New Found Glory and Green Day famous. All three of their songs on this split, including "I Hate My Job", "Loss for Words" and " Sobered, So Bored!", are great pieces of pop punk with hooks that get ingrained in your heads like the 50 states in grade school. The song "I Hate My Job" is particularly resonant as we all can relate to the title, let alone the lyrics. "I hate my job/yeah it really sucks/I hate my job/delivering lunch/I hate my job/ I hate my boss/ cause she talks too much". Tell me: who can't relate to that? I know I can.



Musically, the band doesn't delve beyond their poppy, crunchy guitar-driven sound, and that's just fine. Sometimes if you have the ability to produce great, memorable hooks via the way a band plays its instruments, then keep on doing what you're doing. It's obviously working. What makes this band great is their ability to relate to their audience with their lyrics, like another song of theirs, "Sobered, So Bored!". About a night without a thing to do and no beer to enjoy the night with, the song is the script for every late high school, early college kid's life.



Honna Lee has the rare ability to succeed in the confined space of 3 minutes and distorted guitars along with melodies that will get stuck in your head for days on end. The Plurals succeed in the realm of blistering noise married with clean, angelic melodies. Overall this EP is a great piece of music from two bands you will definitely be hearing more about in the future. - Lansing Local Music Examiner

Hello internet, Jake here again, feeling a bit under the weather at the moment, but still as always I have another great area band to tell you to check out.

Honah Lee is a four piece band of dudes from Trenton, NJ who seem to think life has three importances, beer, rock n roll, and parties. There’s nothing to complicated about Honah Lee’s sound, it’s mostly power chord, thunderous drums blasts, and sing/scream vocal styles over a slight feedback, his that gives throwback to the sound of days when records weren’t made through computers. Honah Lee’s songs are dumb, and at times a bit over the top, but they are also crazy catchy and a ton of fun.
I mean, I don’t think anyone should look to deep into the lyrical meaning of songs, by a band with titles such as ” The Kind of Girl It’s Okay To Hit (With Your Car)”, however if you’re looking for another band to rock out to as the soundtrack to your next party this might be it.

The songs of Honah Lee are fast and have a killer groove that pre-punk luminaries like THe Stooges introduced to rock n roll.

They’re riffs blend big noise feedback of indie noiserockers like the Pixies, The Replacements. They’re vocal are the slightly out of key scream singing approach resembling Green Day’s Billy Joe Armstrong or head Foo Fighter Dave Grohl. So what if they can’t really sing, they’re good enough and they have high enough energy and catchy enough songs that after a few listens, you might be singing along too; I was. It’s that energy thought that makes this band so interesting, In a way not unlike the Hives, or Iggy and The Stooges, Honah Lee rips through 4 minute or less groove filled songs so catchy you can’t help but smile.

So crack a beer, light a smoke, and rock out, because well you sort of get the feeling that’s what the boys of Honah Lee would have wanted.

When you cross the bridge into the capital of the Garden State, there is a sign that welcomes all to that filthy city, “Trenton Makes, The World Takes”. Well this Trenton, NJ band makes good old fashion rock n’ roll, take it in and enjoy.

STANDOUT TRACKS: #1 Loss For Words, #2 I’m Insane

RATING: 3 of 5 - Cracked! Music Blog

I hope that's where Honah Lee's name came from.
Because that's awesome.
I <3 Puff the Magic Dragon.
I don't really know what I was expecting from this band based on the name, sound-wise that is, but what came out of my speakers was far from it!
And in the right direction, that's for sure.
I guess I should have read their bio on facebook first, because it would have given me a better idea than the Puff song:
Honah Lee is a straight foward, high energy Rock n' Roll band from Trenton, NJ. Influenced by bands like the Ramones, the Replacements, and the Pixies, Honah Lee delivers a refreshing, throwback sound that you can't quite put your finger on; simple music done right! Intoxicating melodies you can't shake from your brain!!!
That part about the throwback sound that you can't put your finger on is totally true, and probably the reason I'm cheating by putting their bio in my review ;) .
Oh, and the part about intoxicating melodies you can't shake from the brain, that's also entirely true.
I smell a new Band of the Week for next week... HOLLA.
And a new Band of My Heart.... tee hee.
Na na na na na na na na na na.
Whoever Bobby is, they're dead, as the singers are politely informing me in the song rightfully titled "Bobby's Dead".
Sorry, said song is hella badass and totally distracted me from what I was saying there / totally gave me a reason to na'ner on because I had nothing to say.
....
oh, here's something!
This album - titled Life Won't Let Me bounces between guitar-full rock n roll to almost NOFX like hyper punk rock, and even losing itself to more crunchy 90's style rock... almost as much as it switches from emotional-driven lyrics to talking about Bobby being dead in that teasing chorus.
And magically (where's Puff?) I LOVE EVERY ITTY BIT OF IT.
And what's this I hear.... strings? Softy, but about 80% surely... at the end of "Come On, Let's Go". Wowza!
String-boner, ignite!
Ha, these guys even manage to rebel against responsibility way better than MxPx ever did in their next song, "Life Won't Wait", a much better pop punk song on the subject.
From first to last, especially the last, this album is one solid piece of gold shit. Shit used there as a slang term not literal, or in the sense that it's crap. - MusicSheBlogged

It's always refreshing when you're asked by your colleague to get off your ass and review an album, and then you turn said album on and you realize it's fucking excellent and this review is going to write itself. That's the case with the new album Life Won't Let Me by Honah Lee from New Jersey. It's fucking awesome.

Honah Lee's vocalist Tim has a very distinctive voice. It's kind of like 80s style pop punk vocals on top of a pretty broad variety of instrumentals, as far as era goes. Some songs sound like they're straight out of the 80s, while others sound more 90s or even more recent. The vocal melodies on this record as fucking infectious and will do anything to prevent you from evicting them from your head. Trust me, you're stuck with these.

"Give me something with a badass tempo, give me something that will stick in my head. Give me something with some real emotion, give me something so I know I'm not dead." These are lyrics directly out of the song "Bobby's Dead" on Life Won't Let Me and it's interesting because they definitely take care of these demands just by writing this song and every other song on this album.

If you're looking for a new pop punk band to become obsessed with, I think we have you covered with Honah Lee. If I would have to compare them to any bands, I would have to list The Queers, The Ergs, and Screeching Weasel. The thing is, I like them better than two of those bands. Can you guess which? Hopefully.

So, if you're going to do anything this week…which is something I generally advise against, I say that this 'anything' you're getting into should be listening to Life Won't Let Me by Honah Lee. Do it.

-Idle - Idle and the Bear

The newest addition to the Good Time Gang roster, Honah Lee, are back from the swamps of New Jersey with a new album, entitled “Life Won’t Let Me” (Good Time Gang Recordings). Having put out a split with The Plurals last year, do they go in the same epic and catchy direction or somewhere else entirely? Here’s a review.

This is pretty mid-tempo, catchy and overall good power chord driven punk. The guitars, as on “Bobby’s Dead” and “Leave It to my Goddamn Brain” are sharp and concise. Power chords are their best friends. Played by vocalists/guitarists Tim Hoh and “Dim”, they drive the melodies and add extra an extra kick. The occasional guitar solo is Ramones-esque where it stays within the songs key and melodic range without being too outlandish (they would do Johnny Ramone proud). The bass is punchy and sometimes fuzzed out. It helps enhance the rhythm from just a typical punk rhythm to something else…probably something like if Martin Hannett tweaked a few knobs here and there during production. The bass plays it’s part but also has its own space.

I really like the vocals and the lyrics on this album. Singer Hoh has a hookiness in his raspy voice that’s undeniable. Songs get stuck in your head with nicely placed melodies and “oh ho ho” vocables that make the record such a return listen. The lyrics are great here too. Lots of singing about beer, parties and mid-20s life. On “Bobby’s Dead”, Hoh sings “Gimme something with a badass tempo, gimme something that’ll stick in my head/Gimme something with some real emotion/Gimme something so I know I’m not dead”. This coupled with the “nah-na-na-nah” choruses are great party anthems. I can only imagine a room full of sweaty punks screaming along. This song will be a great live crowd pleaser.

If you’re looking for something that’s mostly uptempo, catchy and a great overall listen, I recommend this. Go pick it up. - LansingMusic.TV

You'd think after a band supporter offered to let them crash at his place after a show in the Ohio suburbs, only to have that same supporter pull guns out on them after they got to his house, the guys in Honah Lee would be a bit shaken by the memory, but no. They just laugh it off as each one interjects his own take on what happened, taking it in stride as if it's nothing more than a normal night on tour, or an epic prank pulled on them by a friend. This is how the entire interview went, as if the fun, high energy, straight-up pop-punk rock-n-roll of the music they play onstage is a reflection of their determination to have a good time above all else.

With a sound reminiscent of early Green Day, the Trenton, N.J., natives formed Honah Lee in 2008 with Tim, guitar and lead vocals; Jim, bass guitar; Dim, lead guitar; and Tony on drums, reminding me of the Kevin Smith movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and the joke about Justice's name not matching the rhyme scheme. When I told them this, they laughed and swore the names were real and the rhyming was just a fluke.

Well on their way to a national stage, they opened for the Foxboro Hot Tubs, a side project band consisting of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tre Cool of Green Day, and Kevin Preston of Prima Donna at the famed New York night club Don Hill's in the spring of 2010. They've also played a live show on the Philadelphia area radio station Radio 104.5 Live at Five for an audience of approximately three million people, as well as recently headlined the New Jersey Art All Night festival in June. Added to their growing list of credits is a song in the trailer of the upcoming Lionsgate film Mancation. Honah Lee is everywhere these days, which makes their tour through the Midwest in October all the more exciting.

In addition to music, Honah Lee's drummer, Tony, also does visual arts and film, and as a writer, I always love a good story. So the band explained to me the story behind the recently released music video for their song "Girls." According to Tim:
Tony had just finished working on Jeff Stewart, the director's, new movie the Velvet Elvis and we had discussed that in return he would shoot our next video. Jeff came out to our local watering hole, the Mill Hill Basement, in Trenton, N.J., to catch a live set and get an idea of what it is we do. Our songs are pretty catchy and we tend to have a large female audience. On this particular night we were headlining and the two bands before us were aggressive punk bands, not the ladies cup of tea. So they all hung out at the upstairs bar and drank their asses off waiting for Honah Lee. So Jeff walks in as our set starts and witnesses this eruption of drunken energy. The place was packed and the first four rows of people were all girls, moshing and throwing beers everywhere! It was pretty out of control! The funniest part was all these tough punk guys standing in the back, arms folded, with looks on their faces like, 'I ain't fuckin with that!' The women owned that room! So Jeff decided that night that was what he wanted to capture. As soon as Jeff said that I was like, 'We have the perfect song for that video!', and the rest is history!"

It's been a little over a year since the release of their album Life Won't Let Me, through GTG Records, so they're spending the next two months in the studio recording the next album before their upcoming tour. Expect to hear a lot of buzz about Honah Lee in the next year. - The Huffington Post