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The recording studio has had the double-edged sword effect on music. It makes pop bands sound as perfect as we expect them
to sound, and greatly improves the quality of pop/rock music. Unfortunately, it can also pare down a sound from its raw form
to a slightly less real form.
That's the problem with Dead at 22's "Thanks for the Inspiration" EP. Even though crunchy hardcore emo riffs, powerful
screams, yearningly invasive vocals, and excellent energy abound, the sound is so produced that somewhere in the mix, the
songs lose their violent, crisp edge.
Don't get me wrong. The hardcore emo here made me sit up and take notice. It's just not as unbridled as I wish it would
be. The speeding, manic title track features quick-paced riffs throughout, and they are all so brilliant that it made me wonder
which one was supposed to be the 'lead riff'. I fell in love with this track, as I continually find myself skipping the rest
of the songs to get back to it.
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Best Feature: The emotion that's captured in the vocals.
Genre: Hardcore emo
And that's a tragedy in itself, as songs like "Tearing Apart" and "Why I Hate California" punch a hole in your heart with
the enormous amounts of violent emotion poured into them. That's really what makes this band, the emotion. The actual instrumentation
here is nothing especially groundbreaking, but all the members work together well enough to form a cohesive unit to back up
the vocals.
This is a good album. It has some profoundly cool songs, and good promise for the band. If I were ever to see them live,
I would probably be a lot more enthusiastic about this than I am. It just feels a little bit overdone, fuzzed out, not as
clear as it could be. The music gets an A, the production gets a C, which averages this album to a B. And that's still above
average.
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