There’s something about young middle class males spitting vitriolic diatribes over frantic power chords and galloping snare drumbeats that makes me want to raise my fist and scream along. Pop-punk may have lost favor with the general public and been banished to the realms of teenage angst, but I will never abandon my first musical love.

As a result of the social stigma, I have become an extremely careful and critical listener of pop-punk. But when I find a band that does it well, I don’t hold back any praise. Go-Kart Records' The Menzingers rock the house, and A Lesson in the Abuse of Information Technology is its calling card.

With a lengthy title that implies socio-political unrest before it’s even half over, it’s apparent without even listening that restraint, nuance and subtlety are not things the Menzingers treasure.

The strained, nearly hoarse tone with which the initial lines of “Alpha Kappa Fall Off a Balcony” are hollered makes it even more certain - this is not thoughtful music to listen to in your bedroom. This is in-your-face music that is meant to be witnessed in a group setting - in a basement, in a mosh pit, in a community. This is nothing less than a call to arms, and that’s exactly what the Menzingers had in mind. After all, their name is nothing more than a punked-up corruption of the word “messengers.”

From group yelling against authority (“Sir Yes Sir”) to trademark pop-punk metallic bass riffing (the rollicking title track) to Green Day-esque acoustic songs (“Richard Coury”), this CD has pretty much everything you could want in a pop-punk CD. There are nods to their influences, with vocal harmonies reminiscent of both Green Day and Blink-182 in their early '90s heyday and the occasional bass rhythm pulled from an Offspring song or two, but it feels more like paying homage than paying royalties.