Cleveland's Final Plan starts things off with heavy hardcore based in the old school style with aggressive vocal screams and a good sense of occasional melody. It's not particularly original at all, but I like the songwriting. As with many of these bands they have a knack for keeping things short and simple with some strong bass runs or forceful breakdowns, and I can get into it. And yeah, they definitely drop some chord progressions that have that undeniable Clevo sound happening, so you can't really complain there... The production is pretty good. It could use a little work, but everything is fairly clear and even, and nothing particularly bothers me. I might turn the bass up more and tighten the mix in some areas so that everything would be closer in with each other, but it's no big deal. Lyrically things are personal, it's different than what you might expect without being anything amazing... "It's hard to live when you're a machine, I'm left with broken bottles and empty hearts, Your vacancy is where it all starts, And I'll keep taking chances I don't fucking have, And you'll keep missing times that you've planned, I gave everything to you and you don't care, You won't give anything and I just don't care." My Luck hails from Texas and drops more old school styled hardcore, though a bit more straightforward. The songs are shorter and tend to be slightly faster, and there's some distortion over the vocals. "Ink" unloads a solo but it's really terrible and I don't see the point... "Her Eyes Were Crossed on 'E'", however, is much more diverse with some melody and brief spurts of heaviness - making it a lot more memorable and emotional. I'm not that big on the recording here. Everything is sort of mashed together and there's not enough detail to the low-end or the treble. It needs more clarity and more overall density/punch. It's just too flat right now, and the vocals stick out because of the weird distortion filter, so it doesn't stand up to Final Plan's material all that well. The lyrics here are similar to those of Final Plan, personal and somewhat unordinary, but not spectacular: "I'm a thousand miles away in a Texas town, Not facing repercussions or a sound, A dead end kid in a fucked up town, I've had nothing worse than a frown, Pain soaked words from a biased pen, And now I never wanna fucking see you again..." The layout is pretty simple. The outer artwork mostly consists of the band names and the record title, with one illustration of a hand breaking out of the ground in front of a tombstone. Everything else is all text. Under the CD you get thanks lists, inside you get lyrics and brief recording/lineup information. That's that. 10 tracks are listed in the booklet but there are only 9 on the CD itself, I'm not sure what's up with that. I think this release is sort of short for a split CD, but both bands have potential... even though Final Plan definitely steals the show for my money.
[Thorp]
Running time - 19:42, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Aptenodytes, Regret Me Not, Her Eyes Were Crossed on "E"]
Thorp Records - http://www.thorprecords.com
