Another day, another European jangly indie / post-hardcore band striving for your attention without really putting in any effort to make their music stand out from the pack, instead filling five tracks with deliberately oblique images and frustratingly half-baked riffs. Just what I want to be listening to. Wait a sec, I just need to claw out my eyeballs in annoyance.
The word frustrating perfectly sums up ‘Freeze! Don’t Buy It’ because it’s so infuriatingly self-satisfied. From the snappy, look-at-how-ironic-we-can-be title to every scratchy guitar line the CD reeks of in-jokes and pretension – hardly inviting me to take much of an interest. ‘America’s dull, meandering melodies plod along with the urgency of a brick (but without the charisma), feeding into the lifeless ‘My Johnson’. Everything is expressed in shades of grey, without any of the individuality or bite of, say Biffy Clyro.
Five tracks, all sounding exactly the same? No sense of identity whatsoever? Try listening to ‘Adapt ‘til You Snap’ without looking at your watch at least a dozen times. It’s time you’ll never get back – in fact, I urge you to petition Feverdream and make them waste a few minutes of their lives simply because they’ve taken up my time and I’m angry. But funnily enough it’s not as if Feverdream have managed to make music that can move people – it’s so mundane and violently AVERAGE that it’s offensive to me. If you need an expensive coaster you could buy this. If not, it’s just boring shite,
Ben
www.coalition-records.com