Armsbendback "The Waiting Room" CD
[Trustkill]
Hey, look, another band that takes three words with no spaces for their band name. This kind of sounds like an MTV band to me, at least by today's "accepted standards", but it's still pretty good. I guess you could say it's a mix of hard rock, emo, and indie type stuff, with leanings towards both the aggressive and the laidback. Most of the vocals are sung, but there is some sick screaming as well, and the writing is generally melodic - employing lots of post-hardcore rhythms and textures as well as spacey effects and lush clean breaks, etc. My only minor gripes with this record are that none of the songs are really catchy or memorable per se, and the record's too long as a result. Some of the individual songs are too long for what they offer, but a total running time of 50 minutes is on the long side when the songs sort of tend to sound similar to one another. Some of the vocal harmonies are great, and I honestly think these guys could write better songs if they focused solely on the melodic angles rather than worrying about trying to even it out with that aggressive side. The subtle layering of acoustic guitars in "Garry Gilmore's Eyes" is awesome, and that track definitely has a more driving rhythm to it that I enjoy, but not many of the other tracks stand out... and a few that carefully employ keyboards come close to agitating me. I'm not into the keyboards at all, they just don't add to the songs, so thankfully they're used very minimally. The recording's not bad. It sounds professional, but I do think there's room for improvement. I mainly think the center of the mix lacks some of the warmth and density that I would expect from a band of this nature. The drums aren't quite as thick as I'd like, the bass is there but needs more volume, and the guitars would probably be fine if the rhythm section was taking care of the gaps. I don't mind the vocals at all. I really like the presentation. It's nothing earth shattering, but there's really nice use of color and textures, most of the photos work, and the type is all tight and crisp. I think it looks nice. I'm not a fan of the lyrics because they're just boring to me, all dealing with tumultuous relationships and that stuff, the same old same old. "I can't believe I will survive but I'm just waiting for the time to breathe to breathe is hard enough I can't breathe just breathe it's long enough. But how, but how, I can't believe I made it. Thank god it's over." I really like a couple of these songs, but the rest is just something I can listen to, I don't really have much of a feeling about it. I bet this band could end up being great, but not just yet. (6/10)
Running time - 50:11, Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Primera (Last Goodbye), The Arms of Automation, Garry Gilmore's Eyes]
Trustkill Records - http://www.trustkill.com

This review has been displayed 2253 times.