Something about the album cover here would suggest some sort of poppy punk type of thing, but that is not at all what's going on here. This is melodic and emotional metalcore with a little bit of a radio friendly sort of appeal to it ("radio friendly" in a Thursday sort of way or something, it's not poppy, in general it's actually pretty dark). Revolving around moderately paced tempos with some rhythmic post-hardcore influences and some discordant notes mixed in with melodic chord progressions, they also do the whole singing and screaming thing mixed with heavy parts and clean parts. The reverberated clean guitars, semi-spoken vocals, and constant drum fills of "Fuse" seem out of place to me, sounding more like a weird attempt at trying to sound like Tool or something like that... I don't know, I can live with it, but it doesn't fit in with the other songs. I love the thick melodic bass and clean guitars in the nearly seven-minute "Osmosis", and the soft singing vocals are also nice. It's just a good, solid song with a lot of powerful melodies and a slow build... The recording's alright. I really like the bass tone and the natural warmth of the percussion, and the guitars and vocals sound pretty good as well. However, the vocals are too far out front so I'd drop 'em back more, and the guitars could stand to be a bit smoother on the clean front, while the distortion is decent. A tighter and more honed sound would help, but they're in a tolerable spot already. The layout's not that great, just because it looks boring and the front cover, which is problematic based on the content alone, is also very pixilated. The text is all really clean, so I don't know what happened with that photo. The lyrics are personal and deal with depressing topics, which is fine. The only thing that really bothers me is that in "See You Tomorrow" they go so far as to repeatedly refer to someone by name, and that's frustrating because it pretty much ensures that no one will be able to identify with the song as a result. This isn't a bad EP. I think it would be cool if the band stayed more towards their hardcore side and shed some of the baggage of strange rock influences or whatever, but they've got something going for 'em. The layout needs a shitload of improvement, though. It totally misrepresents everything about what they're doing... and that rubs me the wrong way.
[self-released]
Running time - 22:47, Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: Osmosis, Crutch]
Rivals - http://www.rivals.ws
