16 May 2007 // A review by johnsoncraigsbc
Ritalin is reminiscent of Metallica in the ‘kill em all’ days, especially with guitaring like that in ‘The Haunting’. But apart from some good moments, the rest of the mid chorus strumming started to hurt my ears a bit.
You see the thing with amateur punk rock is that if you don’t have a large fan base it is hard to get far in the industry, and singing like that in ‘Losing Out’ doesn’t do you any favours either.

Huge ups for the album artwork though, thanks to Nico Madill. I’m not too sure how well it compliments the music, but the booklet inside the cover certainly has a dark and underlying theme to it, which is voiced through the lyrics of the music, but not so well through the musicianship.
With a combined photo of god knows what on the back of the album, it’s hard to take this band seriously, but they do seem to be hardworking.

Personally, I would love to see this band break away from the restrictions that I feel are holding them back from producing more musically intense pieces. Instead of keeping each song to the classic verse, chorus, bridge mechanism, it would do them a world of good to step up the technicality of the guitar solos, and then produce more of them. Otherwise, I fear this band will fade into the back ground along with all the other heavy bands we’ve seen bestow the underground scene in this country.
6/10

Craig Johnson

Since forming in Dunedin around 1997/98 Ritalin played hundreds of shows throughout New Zealand and Australia. Hitting the road more than pretty much any other NZ punk band before or since, it was not rare to see these 4 disheveled boys roll into a town near you looking for a party to play and some booze to drink.

Releases included the 3 song Bitter (2001), the mini album Stop Wasting Time (2003), the Two Fat Ladies/Ritalin split CD (2004) the full length album Roguetown (2007) as well as a very limited self titled EP (2006) and the Super CD (2006) which was a collection of all previous releases.

Ritalin played alongside countless New Zealand and overseas acts in their existence, sharing the stage with bands like Sick Of It All, Strike Anywhere, Bouncing Souls, Sommerset, Kitsch, Missing Teeth, Two Fat Ladies and many, many more.

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