Album Review: Ocean Hills - Santa Monica

I wasn't going to write a review for this album, or even listen to it, but the end of year slowdown in album releases hit just a bit earlier than I expected, so I had the free space in my schedule to do so. That's probably not a good thing, because the first single that was released from this album angered me tremendously, and I had a feeling the rest of the songs wouldn't do anything to calm my mood. I've written about that song before, so let's get the worst part out of the way first.

"A Separate Peace" is a disgusting song that I felt ashamed to have ever listened to. The narrator of the story, who I assume is the singer himself, as he gives no indication there's a character involved, is telling his son about how he left the kid's mother, and is now dating a woman the son's age. It takes a special kind of asshole to say such a thing, let alone to broadcast it to the world. Think about it this way; when a man says he's dating a woman his son's age, what he's saying is that if he had a daughter, she would be in the demographic he is sexually targeting. That is horrific, disgusting, and rather depraved. The only difference between this song and Donald Trump saying he would date his own daughter is overtness of the deviancy. Then there's a throwaway line about the narrator's other son dying of an overdose. My mind is left spinning, trying to understand how a 'man' can be that despicable. Seriously, and I don't say this lightly, fuck this song.

So what's the rest of the album like? Since the press materials say they want to pay tribute to bands like Nickelback, I think you get the idea. A second-rate version of a band most serious music fans already hate, oh joy.

In addition to the awful family drama, we also get a poorly written political commentary in "Death Or Liberty", which is more of the same 'the system sucks', 'burn it all down' garbage that doesn't actually have a meaningful complaint behind it. There's also the singer's lame attempt at winning over a woman (I'm assuming - the song "Santa Monica" is confusing whether he's singing to a woman, a saint, or the city) by saying to her, "let's make some babies?" Oh, for Christ's sake. This guy is single-handedly writing an entire album of every pathetic cliche of modern 'manhood'.

If this was satire, it would still fail, since there isn't any humor to be found in any of this. But I get the impression this is all done from the heart, and all of this is what they consider to be cool. It's an indictment of modern society that men would ever feel proud of these thoughts enough to put them out in the open, or that there are apparently fans who think telling a woman how much you want to get her pregnant is a compliment. Rock has never been known for respect, but I hate how there seems to be very few who have grown and evolved with the times. This album is so backwards, so regressive, I hardly know what to say about it.

In fact, there are only two positive things I can say about Ocean Hills. 1)They haven't written a song *yet* about forcing an addict into sex, presumably in exchange for drug money, as Nickelback did. 2)Ocean Hills is easy to avoid, since this album will never be popular.

You can save yourself the trouble of ever listening to this tripe. I took the bullet for you.