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I tried very hard to like The Armed Forces. This Nashville quartet wants to be The Clash, and don’t quite carry it off. They look like your little brother’s (or your son’s) punk ass, smart-mouthed friends who don’t hang out at the mall because they would be subjected to a righteous ass-whuppn’ if there was a crowd of girl scouts there. However. They’re not all bad, musically, not bad at all. They just need some work.

The five tracks on Modern Gospel for Modern Men & Women, The Armed Forces debut EP, have the benefit of being short --- ranging in length from 45 seconds to a bit over 3 minutes --- and that’s not a left-handed compliment. While it’s not all killer, there’s no filler, either. In The Free World is a great track, actually, a fine way to close the disc, full of clever lyrics and energy and clever hooks. The other tracks, however, all have one or more of those elements but are also missing one or more of those elements. Again, there’s a lot of Clash influence here, and The Armed Forces might be better off attempting to find there own voice rather than to (so closely) emulate someone else’s.

The main problem with Modern Gospel for Modern Men & Women is that the material is almost, but not quite there. Everything comes together on In The Free World; when they sing that “we’ll be kickin’ out the windows tonight” you get the feeling they just might mean it.

Their full length disc, whenever it arrives, may come wrapped in shattered glass. It just might be worth checking out.