Imagine Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba fronting Taking Back Sunday, and you get a rough sense of what the debut album form California's The Story So Far sounds like. While that is something of a crass analogy, these 11 songs do burst with the cathartic desperation of the former and the boundless urgency of the latter. Rough by catchy, raw but well recorded… when an album exudes as much heartfelt passion and determination as this one does, it's hard not to be impressed. Under Soil And Dirt is part of the new school of pop-punk with all of those hardcore influences, but it's not like the endless list of records that mess up that formula. It's music that you've heard before, but delivered with such an urgent force that it makes you pay attention. There are no corny breakdowns – instead there are actual well thought-out portions of musicianship. There isn't an unnecessary overflow of gang vocals and there are no awkwardly placed screams. The Story So Far is already doing this sort of pop-punk better than the bands that started it – Under Soil And Dirt has enough firepower to rival Mutiny! and it's certainly better than Set Your Goals' upcoming release. Somewhere in the middle between the slightly cornier side of the genre and the passionate, desperate core that provides for these angry, angsty songs, The Story So Far shows the potential to develop into a frontrunner in the genre, and it all starts with Under Soil And Dirt.