This is not exactly the kind of music you come home to relax too, unless perhaps your taste runs more towards death metal than sunny pop. Loud, angular guitars mingle with bursts of screaming in stop/start- type songs that immediately bring bands like At The Drive In to mind. And in fact, the lead singer quite resembles Cedric Bixler, lead singer of that aforementioned band, and now lately of The Mars Volta. But while At The Drive In and The Mars Volta have that quality, there's also much more of a semblance of melody found in those bands than is found here. Parts of it are so a-melodic I almost winced. The first half is slightly more melodic than the second half on an album that's thankfully fairly short. The two best tracks are "Within Siberia" which in an instrumental number, and quite good, and "Everything's A Motel" which has a rather surprisingly playful ending. Would sound good in a set with Alexisonfire.

By Ryan Long
Oct 18, 2003

This is not exactly the kind of music you come home to relax too, unless perhaps your taste runs more towards death metal than sunny pop. Loud, angular guitars mingle with bursts of screaming in stop/start- type songs that immediately bring bands like At The Drive In to mind. And in fact, the lead singer quite resembles Cedric Bixler, lead singer of that aforementioned band, and now lately of The Mars Volta. But while At The Drive In and The Mars Volta have that quality, there's also much more of a semblance of melody found in those bands than is found here. Parts of it are so a-melodic I almost winced. The first half is slightly more melodic than the second half on an album that's thankfully fairly short. The two best tracks are "Within Siberia" which in an instrumental number, and quite good, and "Everything's A Motel" which has a rather surprisingly playful ending. Would sound good in a set with Alexisonfire.

By Ryan Long
Nov 15, 2003