Singles Roundup: Dream Theater & Michael Schenker ft Axl Rose

I hope you didn't want positivity today.

Dream Theater - Night Terror

The big news with Dream Theater is that Mike Portnoy is back in the band. That news has little bearing on this song, except for when it does. I'll explain, but it's a bit complicated. The short version of the story is that this new song is standard fare Dream Theater, so your preconceptions are entirely accurate. There is nothing surprising or new at all, so we don't need to get too far into a discussion of what all of this means for the next chapter of the band's career. The straight line will not bend, or break.

The deeper discussion involves the way we listen to music. I am not someone who listens to drums under most circumstances, so Portnoy's return makes almost no difference to me. He plays like himself, which means it still sounds like Dream Theater. Where I think his impact can be felt is in the way the song is arranged, as that is where he was so often involved. That is also where this song feels like a huge step back from where the band has been in his absence.

The biggest issue this song has is in its construction. There are copious riffs, fills, and solos, but it feels like we have gone back to their self-indulgent worst. Ideas are thrown against the wall with little concern about the narrative through-line. Instrumental parts pile up in between the vocals, playing into the worst stereotypes about prog being music for music nerds. When those vocals do come in, it's in the form of a chorus so melodically simple it doesn't grip me at all.

While it's nice that they haven't recycled their usual formula for a lead single, this song is not inspiring confidence in what the new album is going to be. These ten minutes are Dream Theater at their worst, and there is another hour of material still to come. They had focused their songwriting much more during their time with Mike Mangini, and this song feels like when you return to a familiar place to realize you memories sanitized what was never so great.

Michael Schenker ft Axl Rose - Love To Love

I want to thank Michael Schenker for releasing this song. No, not because it's good, which it isn't. I want to think him for finally making it clear the world is better off without Guns N Roses ever releasing a new album again.

Why? If you listen to this song, it's clear that Axl has no voice left. He sounds absolutely horrific trying to softly coo the verses. There was a time he was described as having 'helium voice', and this version of Axl is that, but with even less power. He sounds broken, tired, and like a shell of who he used to be. The fact that Schenker is re-recording these songs is enough to elicit a groan, but to pick an Axl who can't sing to perform one of UFO's most legendary songs is such a stunning lack of self-awareness. I'm truly baffled.

As I was saying, hearing the current state of Axl's voice makes it clear a new Guns N Roses album would be a complete clusterfuck. There is a good reason the reunited band has only put out songs Axl sang a decade ago. Those are the only recordings they can make sound presentable. Unfortunately, Schenker didn't figure that out until he had already committed to Axl being on his record. As much as we complain about people who stop making new music, there is often a good reason why they do. Axl is one of those people I will not complain about if he decides to retire. In fact, I wouldn't have minded if he did so before recording this song.

Quick Reviews: Myles Kennedy & Smash Atoms

For a change, we've got two good ones this week.

Myles Kennedy - The Art Of Letting Go

If eventually everything comes full circle, this album is a fitting example of that. Myles' solo career has now reached a point where he is pulling from all three of his phases, filling the gaps between them in a way that will probably satisfy everyone. This record sounds like what Alter Bridge used to be, with a few hints of their current obsession with heaviness, while also pulling a few guitar licks from his time with Slash. It's very much a melding of everything Myles has been doing all in one album, which happens to fit his voice more than anything else.

Both the production of the last Slash album, and the continued down-tuning of Alter Bridge, have pushed Myles' voice into its most shrill range. He avoids that on this record, and it's all the better for it. These songs are in the right place for his voice to sell the hooks, which he does well. Myles mostly avoids the huge soaring melodies intended for European stadiums, and focuses on more 'songwriter' style melodies.

If you have been a bit put off by Alter Bridge morphing from a rock to a metal band, this album is the perfect antidote. Myles is a rock singer, not a metal singer, and having the proper level of heaviness is key. This record is heavy, yes, but only as a predicate to having good songs. That's a lesson some other bands have yet to learn.

Smash Atoms - Smash Atoms

We have noted there is an increase in the number of bands making attempts at reviving the sound of grunge. Most of those bands do a decent job of capturing the sound, but they don't necessarily capture the spirit. That can be a good thing if you weren't into grunge when it came out (as I wasn't, since I was slightly too young to have been listening at its height), but it also exposes a lack of understanding of what made grunge what it was. The same is true of the retro 70s revival, which underscores either how little thought it given into some of these things, or how much worthless thought I put into it.

Smash Atoms aren't a clone of Alice In Chains, but they sort of are. The sound is ripped straight from their catalog, with the heavy bends in the riffs, and the strained harmonies giving that same haunting tone. The sound of the record is massive, with the guitars filling every corner of the sonic landscape. And yet, there is room for the gritty vocals to stand out.

The band delivers on the songs as well. These songs have big, muscular hooks that play into the power of the sound. I would imagine most people who have spent the last thirty years loving "Would?" and "Man In the Box" will be intrigued by how much Smash Atoms sounds like a rebirth of that period of time. There isn't the same tortured pain to be found here, but maybe we're better off not being so far down that hole. In any case, Smash Atoms is easily the best of these neo-grunge bands that have popped up, and this record has a sneaky chance to be one of the better albums of the year.

Album Review: The Offspring - Supercharged

Punk was supposed to be about being cool, wasn't it? You wouldn't know that from The Offspring, who have now spent the majority of their career writing terrible novelty songs, and throwing in a couple of punk numbers on each album to make it seem like they still have some level of credibility. They don't, and Dexter Holland is a great example of how being smart doesn't mean you can't still be an idiot. To use his own parlance, The Offspring are not fly, even for a bunch of white guys.

Their previous album was not only their worst record by a landslide, it was so bad it felt like an insult to the fans. It was the same kind of half-hearted bullshit effort Green Day put in on their "Father Of All..." album, and I wasn't going to sugar-coat it by trying to find the upside. There was a time when I liked The Offspring a lot, and I'm one of the few people who even liked them into their pop ballad days, but I drew a line. The only reason I'm talking about this album at all is because it happened to find its way into my inbox. I wouldn't have actually put any effort into hearing this thing.

The bullshit starts early, as "Looking Out For #1" not only has terrible spoken interjections, but it entirely borrows the melody and cadence of "Half-Truism" for the chorus. It's enough of a clone that if it struck me the very first time I heard it, the band that has been playing the other song for over a decade should have noticed it sometime in the production and recording phase. But this is late-era Offspring we're talking about, so we shouldn't be expecting anything more.

"Light It Up" follows by completely ripping off "Smash" this time, which at least is the right era of their history to go for. It doesn't do anything to make me think this record had any energy at all put into it, but at least the sound of this one isn't offensive. It's not as good as the source material, but it's not as embarrassing as a lot of their more 'original' sounding material of recent times.

"Make It All Right" has more spoken interjections, this time that come with the sound of the band dropping out, like in the early days of digital music when labels were watermarking promos so they couldn't be spread online. It sounds so ridiculous I'm wondering how anyone can think it was a good thing to put on a record, let alone a group of veterans. Did Dexter decide he didn't have to do an extra take or two of the vocal if they covered it up with a terrible voice-over? That's the impression I get.

Maybe it's just the promo I received, but all of this disappointing music also comes wrapped up in a horrible production. The guitars are thin and buzzy, Dexter's vocals are buried despite being high in the mix, and the cymbals distort all over the place. It's an ugly sound, and lacks any of the charm "Smash" had. That wasn't a 'pretty' production either, but it was clear, heavy, and powerful. This record sounds like it's the copy someone taped on their 1980's boombox while the actual CD was playing.

If that doesn't give you enough of a warning, I'll put it bluntly; The Offspring are no longer a good band. Maybe they put on a decent show if stick to playing the old stuff, but they lost the plot as far as making records a while ago. The only reason to ever listen to this album is feel better about the last time your favorite band disappointed you. The odds are it couldn't be nearly this bad.

Album Review: Ad Infinitum - Abyss

No band sets out wanting to fall into the category of AC/DC or Motorhead where even their most hardcore fans admit every album is pretty much identical. It's one thing to have an identity, and another to have a static identity, and the latter can only work once you have a fan-base large enough to sustain you for the rest of your career. For growing bands, you need to keep people invested, which means doing things that are slightly different, which means doing things that catch us off-guard.

Ad Infinitum had been doing that by sharpening their pop hooks on each album of their three-part cycle, which culminated in last year's nearly flawless "Chapter III". They had finally mastered their craft, writing songs that were modern metal on one level, and melodic joy on another. Combined with Melissa Bonny's immense vocal talent, Ad Infinitum were absolutely one of the few shining stars on the metal horizon.

That's what makes the shift to "Abyss" so jarring. Rather than building on what the previous record did so well, this feels like a jump into a completely different world. The band's penchant for hooks is still there, but the way we get to them is very different, and a change I can't say is for the better. Whereas they were playing a modern sounding version of melodic metal before, they have gone headlong into the depths of modern metal this time.

That means Melissa unleashes more growling vocals, and songs like "Surrender" add in electronics and breakdowns. There is more of a 'core' approach to these songs, which I don't think works on two different levels. There is obviously the level where I simply don't find the growling sections to be nearly as memorable as when Melissa is using her voice in its more natural state. There is also the level where the song construction feels contrived in trying to shoe-horn some of these new sounds into the equation. There is less flow to how the songs move from verses to choruses, and the disjointed nature is a hallmark of modern metal, but it doesn't play well for those of us who are old enough to still eschew playlist listening.

As I said, the album's hooks are still wonderful. The band has been getting better on that front with each album, and they remain at the top of their game in that regard. There are choruses I can hear the crowds at festivals headbanging in time to, screaming the words as a sweaty mass that reminds us how music connects us. I'm not as sure the whole of that horde will enjoy the time between the cathartic moments quite as much.

The dive into modernity is also felt when looking at the track listing. With the majority of these ten songs clocking in at less than four minutes, that means this record is barely over 35 minutes long, which is becoming more common, but feels too short. Honestly, given how quickly this record is arriving after "Chapter III", it almost feels as if the band didn't think they needed to provide us with more of a full album experience. Maybe that's true, and I know my listening tendencies don't mesh with how much of their audience experiences music anymore, but I can only give me own impression. I would have rather waited until the start of next year for the record, if it meant they could write two more quality songs to flesh things out a bit more.

Last time around, I was raving about how Ad Infinitum had finally lived up to the promise I heard in them. I was optimistic about the future, which is a rare thing for me to admit. Now that the future has set in so quickly, my optimism was not entirely a mistake, but at least an overshoot. Ad Infinitum still has all the talent and ability to be great, but if they are shifting their focus, they need to hone the way they work in this style just like they did their more melodic version. Maybe they'll get there, maybe they won't. All I know is that this record, despite its good qualities, feels like a disappointment when I consider where I thought they were going.

"Abyss" is by no means its namesake, but this new chapter isn't stopping me from putting down the book.

Are These The "Futures" We Dreamed Of?

Do you dream in color?

Answering a question that requires you to be asleep may just be an exercise in psychological projection, but even so it leads us in interesting directions. One might think we dream in color because that is the reality we live in, and our dreams are even more fantastical versions of that reality. Much like Technicolor when it first arrived on the scene, color would be saturated to the extreme and distort reality just enough to remind us what we are seeing was never real, but merely a created image bright enough to soak onto film.

Dreaming in black and white, on the other hand, says more about how the world is filled with light and dark, filled with shades of grey in between the extremes of tears of joy and pain. Given that we cannot truly know if we see colors the same way as anyone else without creating a machine to broadcast our thoughts, black and white is the most accurate way of capturing the dreams we conjure for ourselves.

When bands suck the color out of their sound, one of two things will happen; either they will fail miserably with the limited palate, or they will find themselves using the shadows to create shapes of emotion that can cut us deeper than the rays of the sun ever could. It is a difficult trick to pull off, but narrowing the aperture creates a deep focus that brings out the details of pain, that memorializes the cracks in our soul before they scar over once again.

I realized little of this twenty years ago, when Jimmy Eat World put out "Futures". When I initially heard the record, I was the kind of listener who was expecting more songs that sounded like "The Middle" and "Sweetness". I did not understand why a band at the height of their popularity would make such a shift in sound, would suck the shining pop coating off their candied melodies, leaving only the sour core behind. It all makes sense today, and was a brilliant way of making sure the band didn't get caught up chasing after fickle listeners who were going to move on anyway.

"Futures" is a one-of-a-kind record. The guitars are a deeper, thick wash of drop-tuned chords. The production turns down the high end to emphasize the darker and heavier tones. The songs alternate between the band's angriest and saddest reflections of chapters of life they were ready to leave behind, but whose memories they knew they would never escape. They sing about taking pills to forget, and choosing between the drugs and the people, all of which creates the image of an addict to the drama of life. Even if we have moved on, we are never free of the experiences we had, and all it takes is one trigger for us to relapse into the past.

Those chapters can reappear in our minds as historical dramas where we were cast in the starring role, or newsreels to remind us that the news has always been consumed by the worst things that happen on any given day. They are colorless playbacks of events we cannot change, that feel foreign to the current versions of ourselves, but yet circle around our memories as if an old zoetrope attached to a perpetual motion machine.

When we finally get to the line wishing to "kiss me with that cherry lipstick", it is the one spot of color in the entire album, it is the one bright spot we want to remember as the black edges of time and memory collapse in on our past. If we can remember one color, one taste, one feeling, perhaps we can remember who we were. In turn, we can remember why we are who we are today.

The genius of "Futures" is the way it plays with the darkness, using the angry punk energy of songs like "Pain" and the title track to get our blood flowing, which flushes our system with the hormone rush of the painful moments in "Drugs Or Me" or "23". The balance of tempos and tones takes us on a ride, pushing our stomachs into our throats before pulling the rug out from under us. By keeping us off-balance, the record does not let us ready for the next impact. We are hit by it, we are moved by our own memories of coming of age. Some of us are Sisyphus crushed by the rock, unable to push it off us to at least enjoy the sunshine as we toil at our futile task.

"Futures" is not a record for everyone. To truly understand the record, to feel the ways it plays with our emotions, one probably has to be a sad bastard. If you can only see your past in black and white, even through the prism of tears, "Futures" is the sort of record that is essential. The truth exists around us, but sometimes it can only be seen when we close our eyes. "Futures" may be a dream, a fever dream, or a nightmare for some people. Regardless of which option, it is a reflection of the alternate reality some of us spend far too much time living in, one building ramshackle sets atop the stage of the past.

In twenty years, "Futures" has not lost an ounce of potency, because pain never dies. It may fade, but just like running your finger over the spine of an album sitting on your self, sometimes you're just a reminder away from living that moment all over again.

Album Review: April Art - Rodeo

We all know the taste of disappointment, that moment when your hopes are dashed in an instant, and your stomach falls into the depths where your soul was supposed to be. Some of us live there for most of our time, but I think it's safe to say all of us have felt it for at least a short spell. In music, that happens when a band you thought was going to be great turns out to be not bad, but average. Why average? Because there is nothing worse than having almost no reaction to something.

Anger isn't healthy, but it gets the blood pumping in the same way that love does. Apathy is the real killer, because that is when we can struggle to remember if we are human or not.

I'm exaggerating here, but disappointment is the feeling I got listening to April Art's new album. When they started this cycle with the single, "No Sorry", I was all-in. I absolutely loved the high-energy assault, especially Lisa-Marie's gravelly vocals. It was one of my favorite songs of last year, and the album went in bold print on my schedule when it was announced.

So what went wrong? Before anything else, let's start with the issue of the album as a format. The record clocks in at a short thirty-six minutes, which is becoming more and more normal. I wouldn't penalize them for the length if the record was as good as expected. In those thirty-six minutes, we get the aforementioned "Not Sorry", but we also get an acoustic version of the song. Yes, two of the eleven tracks on this record are the same song, which is a step too far for me. It isn't even a bonus track added at the end, it sits before the closer so it can't be avoided.

Those choices become more glaring as the record plays on, as the band delivers time and again. Some of the songs might go a bit far with breakdowns for my taste, also some modern glitchy and hip-hop bits, but each and every song is anchored with a huge sing-along chorus. Their knack for hooks is amazing here, and Lisa-Marie is exactly the voice I want to hear belting these numbers out. She won't be for everyone, but she hits the sweet spot of what I hear in my head when I imagine new strains of music.

We're in similar territory to Amaranthe, which lacks a defining term, but for our purposes can be distilled as ultra-heavy hyper-pop metal. You can hear what I mean better than I can say it. Amaranthe also put out an album this year, and while it was another fine entry that delivered on their trademarks, April Art's album is a more engaging version of that sound. When April Art gets heavy, you can feel the power of the guitars hitting you, and when the hooks come, Lisa-Marie's voice is able to scour away the sheen of our skin so those melodies can easily sink in.

That gets us back to the idea of disappointment. This album is disappointing because there is enough here for it to be one of the best albums of the year. There are also inherent flaws that probably keep it from doing so. To hear that potential falling short is exactly the sort of thing that has made this a year where I have spent far more time listening to old favorites as opposed to new music. The lower bar of nostalgia isn't a fair fight, but I can't control how the past lives on in the present.

What I can say is that April Art has made a record I'm hoping will overcome my initial feelings as I listen to it repeatedly between now and the time I choose the best albums of the year. If that happens, I will happily eat crow. But right now, I can only tell you how I feel in the moment, and that's tempted by the allure of a truly great album that was one or two slight changes away from being what we have.

Album Review: Cemetery Skyline - Nordic Gothic

I think I made it clear when Creeper released their last album that I have never been a fan of goth. In fact, I harangued that album for so blatantly aping goth rock without seeming to understand the ethos at all. Goth is more than sounding cold and croaking a baritone vocal, but that is often what we are given when someone tries to revitalize the scene in a more mainstream way. Creeper failed at it spectacularly, but perhaps a group of people from the icy world of Nordic metal will have better luck.

They do, and I'm not going to waste any time getting to that point. These veterans may not play goth as obvious as some other imitators, but they have been around long enough to know when a good song is a good song, ad they deliver plenty of those. The mood is dark, and rather cold, but the choruses have the semi-uplifting tone to be a black velvet blanket we use as a vampire cape. It's smooth, and soft, and damn comfortable.

The key to all of this is Mikael Stanne, whose baritone crooning has the requisite dark feelings we expect, but who can also give the choruses the scope they require, and perhaps even a bit of tenderness. That gets juxtaposed with the music, which is more metallic than perhaps I would expect from a goth record. Their roots shine through, as the synths play their usual part, but do so atop muscular guitar chords. The result is a sound that feels both musically and emotionally heavy, which is far more striking than a more image-focused approach.

As the record unfolds, we are struck by the proposition that the darkness is merely the space where light has been blocked. Often, that has been done by our own hands, because we don't want to see the truth more clearly illuminated. In the musical sense, that means this much might be trying to be icy and goth, but ice shines quite brightly when light hits it at the right angle. That is how this record comes across, as the melodies of songs like "Never Look Back" are sweet and enveloping.

There's a shared ethos between this record and Katatonia's approach, where beauty and darkness are entwined together to create a lush expression of the human condition. Cemetery Skyline is on the brighter end of that spectrum, but the similarities between this record and "Sky Void Of Stars" are quite strong. It isn't easy to make something beautiful out of the sadder side of our emotions, and bands that are able to do so should be commended.

The only misstep on the record is the closing "Alone Together", which stretches on for nearly eight minutes. That running time means the song is the slowest on the album, and without the energy of the rest, it feels like a drag in comparison. That's a shame, because it leaves a slightly sour aftertaste for what was a perfectly balanced record up to that point. I assume they were trying to end on a more epic note, but the extra time and space doesn't turn into a bigger sound or a bigger hook, which means it hits the cliches of slow music so many metal fans have always had.

Don't let that dissuade you, though. The rest of the album is a wonderful blend of slick and sad, giving us songs that remind us that in the zombie apocalypse, the half-brained becomes a treasured commodity. There's almost always an upside, even if we can't see it. With this record, we can at least hear it.

"Don't You Want One" More Taste Of VK Lynne?

Rhetorical questions are more than a manner of speaking, they are an essential element to having us think about issues we might otherwise skip past. Those questions belie our assumptions, and point our minds in directions where the light may be too bright for us to voluntarily look. It's easy for us to assume we know more than we do, and that we have everything figured out, but we need to have people who challenge us if we are going to become the best versions of ourselves. No matter how good an idea you might have, or how true a moral compass, someone else might be able to show the calibrations aren't as accurate as you have always believed.

VK Lynne this month tackles this task, with her latest song asking us who we want to be as people.

She asks us if we want to be the kind of people who take from those who already have nothing, the kind of people who would take a soul from those who feel they have no love, the kind of people who would give a smile that covers up the edges of a sneer.

We are complicated creatures, and our issues of morality are often complicated. One thing is not, though, and that is whether or not we want to be good people. It doesn't take a philosophical treatise to understand everyone should be treated with kindness, lest we find ourselves on the wrong end of that venom. It also doesn't take a genius to see that neither pain nor love are finite supplies, and we do not have to give one to save the other for people we hold more special.

Some of us have one-track minds, and some of us are the whole damn railway. That is who VK is, as she sheds her usual skin on this song for a more synthetic vibe. This is synth-rock with an electronic edge, not in the industrial sense, but more akin to bands like The Birthday Massacre. As the people we present ourselves to be are usually plasticine versions of the truth, the backdrop is a fitting one for this song. VK is usually a blues baroness, but she proves here she can fit in no matter the landscape.

The authenticity in her voice plays off the synthetic music in interesting ways, altering our perception of what the sonic landscape truly is. Humanity can be artificial at times, but not when art is being made and presented. VK shines through with her performance, streaking a mist of pink notes through the gray atmosphere. Are they the refracted rainbows of optimism we see in the sunlight? That's a rhetorical question, I suppose. What is most interesting here is having a blues song presented to us through a mechanism, proving that while artificial intelligence may one day understand the form of the blues, it will never be able to replicate the feeling.

The point of all this is to say that we all have dark sides, and it is tempting to give in to them at times. When it feels like the world is working against us, we might be entitled to take what we can when we have the chance. Still, it is our ability to see this in ourselves, to fight the urges when they rise, that defines whether we can call ourselves good people.

I am a cynic, and this year especially I have found it nearly impossible to think of humanity as being inherently good. While that might sound depressing, I look at it the other way. If we are selfish creatures, and yet we find it in our hearts and minds to push that aside and be kind to one another, it is a sign of the triumph life can be. Good people may not be born, they may be created, we may choose to be them.

Don't you want to be one?

Album Review: Pale Waves - Smitten

Cynicism abounds, and often for good reason. There are ample reasons to be cynical about Pale Waves. They burst onto the scene with an album that many people regarded as being a copy of The 1975, which earned them plenty of criticism. They pivoted away from that toward the pop/rock revival, which earned them plenty of criticism for still being unoriginal, while also not being good enough. So now they are returning to their original sound, which I'm sure will earn them plenty of criticism, because there is a chance it is merely a ploy to try to win back the people who liked their first album and not the ones that followed.

I am in that camp. Their debut record was a lovely bit of cold, detached synth-rock that in hindsight was mining the same territory Taylor Swift would find on "Midnights". I still have fondness for "Television Romance" and many of those other tracks, yet I have not re-listened to their second or third albums since I found myself talking about them on these pages. And that's despite the fact I liked those records more than a lot of people did. They didn't stick.

So I am happy to hear the band sounding like themselves again, even if there are questions about exactly who they are, and if this is actually their sound. Heather's voice fits this aesthetic better than a more energetic rock band, and simply not being miscast is a point in their favor. "Not A Love Song" has bits of that pop-rock chapter in it, but filtered through Smiths-style synth work, which tamps things down enough to befit the performance. Cold pop has been a thing for a few years now, and Pale Waves takes the best parts of that sound and is able to actually make it sound like pop music. Too often, being muted leaves the songs with no hook at all to them, but Heather has just the right voice to bridge the gap between sad and memorable.

"Perfume" uses the same falsetto jumps "Television Romance" did, which we might call 'hipster yodeling', but gives movement to the melody that is able to hook us. Even when the music itself is a bit flat, as if Heather's vocal, those little movements give the songs a sing-song feeling that makes them engaging through the morass. It's the same high-wire act they performed on their debut record, and to hear them return seamlessly to it is a bit of a difficult thing to wrap my head around.

As the second half of the record unfolds, the shift becomes more natural. Songs like "Seeing Stars" and "Imagination" are pop/rock with a veneer stapled atop them. This is where we hear what is really going on with the record; Pale Waves is realizing it wasn't the songwriting that was failing them, but rather an aesthetic they couldn't embody naturally. Heather's voice is perfect for one thing, and wrong for nearly everything else. When the band tried to be more up-tempo and snappy, it didn't work. She isn't that knid of singer, and pulling the temperature of those songs down to match her tone is all that was needed.

I coined the term 'Daria rock' when I first heard them, and that is where we remain. Rather than being season one, when Daria was a cynic who hated everything, we are now in season five, and Daria has shown emotional growth. Pale Waves is similar, wherein they now are able to be the pop/rock band they have wanted to be, but do it in a way that feels more like themselves. Only time will tell which way this record will age, but the initial feeling is that they just might have pulled a rabbit out of their hat. It's about time.

Quick Reviews: Sinner's Blood & Serious Black

Two different types of disappointment this week:

Sinner's Blood - Dark Horizons

I feel like sometimes certain labels ruin a band's potential before they ever stand a chance. Sinner's Blood put out a debut album I liked quite a bit. They did the modern melodic rock thing very well, and had a singer who stood out as one of the best in the genre. You would think everyone would want to strike while the iron was hot, and try to build some momentum, but that is not what happened. Rather than move to get a second album out, both the band's singer and guitarist went and made multiple albums with namesake projects instead. That had two problems; it took focus off Sinner's Blood, and it watered down the impact when they finally returned.

Unfortunately, the latter of those issues is exactly what has happened here. The band has made another solid album of melodic rock, but with these musicians having put out so many albums already treading the same ground, there is nothing new or novel about hearing their writing anymore. It is only the band's second album, but it feels trite already. Did the solo outings help elevate Sinner's Blood? Did they elevate the members either?

I can't answer that question without data we won't get access to, but from the perspective of a listener it was a lose/lose. There are many up-and-coming musicians who have been put in the position of being overexposed past my point of exhaustion, and Sinner's Blood is feeling the effect of it. I should have been excited by this record, and pleased with the result. Instead, I find myself wondering how much of the same thing I'm expected to listen to before I get tired of it.

Serious Black - Rise Of Akhenaton

Well... this time Serious Black hasn't written an album with multiple songs engaging in rampant misogyny, so this is an improvement.

The band did write a song about the power of heavy metal, which might be my single biggest pet peeve when it comes to this kind of music, so maybe it's not an improvement.

The problem the band has is a lack of vision. Listening to this album is entirely different than their last album, which was different than any of the albums with their former singer. Playing with new elements is fine, and welcome, but there still needs to be a core identity to who a band is. I'm not getting that from Serious Black. The shift from 'personal' songs that creeped me out to a more symphonic power metal direction is exactly the sort of shape-shifting that feels inauthentic, and ultimately leaves a band feeling as if they are trying to follow whatever they think is popular. It hasn't worked for Bloodbound, it isn't working for Creeper, and it doesn't work for Serious Black either.

This record isn't bad by any means, and is clearly a more enjoyable listen than the last one, but I can't say there's anything about it that sounds vital, or that I can say I would ever connect to.