Glimpses of potential, but coming up short.
Posted September 04, 2009
By backtothegarden,
This CD was a bit of an impulse buy for me. I was already pre-ordering a few CDs from the deluge of releases that came out August 25th, so what's another 4 bucks?
Overall, I wasn't blown away by this EP, but I didn't feel like I completely wasted my money, either. These guys are trying to straddle the indie and hard rock genres, something that really isn't easy to do. Most of those experiments wind up sounding a bit contrived (ie later Papa Roach), and this isn't much different. After all, obtaining credibility from two distinctly different scenes is no easy task. Making that more difficult was some really weak production. There's not much excuse for that in this era.
So about the record...the opening "WHAT?! HAHAHAHA!" at the beginning of the first track "Get It Right" I found to be a bit cheesy. Not a good start, but the song wasn't bad overall.
Then came the real deathblow. When the opening riff of the title track, "Start To Believe" came on, I stopped it, and played it again. "Wow, that sounds familiar", I thought. Then it hit me. I dialed up Hoobastank's "Same Direction", and sure enough, SAME RIFF. It's a pretty egregious rip-off. Perhaps I'm reading into it a bit much, but when Christian bands do this, it furthers the stereotype that we live in our own little bubble. Seems like that's happening more often; last year, it was Pillar's blatant rip-off of Skid Row's "Youth Gone Wild" with their track "Reckless Youth". Hopefully, they'll remain the exception, not the rule.
But there were a few good moments. "One Step Back" was a solid track, with a pretty cool interlude at the end. There were some good groove riffs throughout the record, and the vocalist is clearly talented (this is more apparent when he's not screaming). With some better production, these guys could find their niche. A better producer will find that in them.
So to close, it's clear these guys have potential. Perhaps they could take a page from the books of some bands that have had some success combining these genres, ie Dropping Daylight and Falling Up. But it might be a good idea to stop short of completely stealing someone's pre-recorded musical ideas first. View All Music And Book Reviews By backtothegarden | View backtothegarden's Profile
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