Artist - Various Artists
Album - Energy Muzik
Label - Rise Up
Reviewer - Rev. Shakes Spear
Mixing good and bad, pretty and ugly – this compilation offers a bit of something for almost everyone. That is, if you like your music somewhere between Pantera & Linkin Park.
Not being a big fan of the screamo-psycho-drama-type music in general (which seems to dominate this collection) I still found a couple of gems among the 21 bands featured on this disc.
The album opens nicely with a trio of fairly poppy, hooky numbers. Aphasia’s "Flatline" – the ‘lightest’ selection of the bunch – with crisp guitars, driving beats and passionate delivery, and even classic ‘ooooh, ooooh’ back-up vocals. Nice. Next, Domeshots offers up “More”, a moody, heavy, plodding song highlighted by some sweet bass work and a surprisingly-hummable chorus. Then, Nural gives us “Tension” – an appropriately named song for it’s frantic energy and nice use of…well…tension. Clean, coherent, intelligible and fairly sincere – as far as I can tell anyway. So far, so good.
At song 4, things start to go slightly awry. Beyond Your Eyes starts in on the ‘I’m–gonna-puke-screama-singing’ theme with "My Scars". Girls doing the devil-gut-growl? It’s bad enough when guys try to sound all tough and evil and angry. For the most part the rest of the tracks seem to follow along familiar-sounding lines: power punk and / or screamy, angry hell-howling…
This seems to be a decent mix of some really good bands, so I’m sure you’ll find something you’ll like. Check it out for yourself and see if you don’t discover a new, great band for your music collection.
Track Listing
1. "Flatline" - Aphasia.
2. "More" - Domeshots.
3. "Tension" - Nural.
4. "My Scars" - Beyond Your Eyes.
5. "Addicted to Faith" - Normal Like You.
6. "Here again" - Fallen From The Sky
7. "As We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us" - Fairwell Madison.
8. "Don't Look Back to Minnesota" - Five Minute Ride.
9. "Broken Thoughts" - Manntis.
10. "Height of Culture" - Gramercy Riff.
11. "Valentine's Day" - Day Two. Girl vocals by Jen Faldalen.
12. "Smashed Into Pieces" - Silverstein.
13. "Nothing Holy" - Please Mr. Gravedigger. 14. "Cutsman"; - HORSE the band.
15. "Annexation of Puerto Rico" - Divide the Day.
16. "Make It Die" - The Venting Machine.
17. "Beauty in Details" - Dead Elizabeth.
18. "Ex's and Oh's" Elora Dauna.
19. "Your Pride" - The Linden Murder.
20. "In between the sheets"; - Glass Casket.
21. "The Beginning" - As I Lay Dying
