That was extremely obnoxious. Apparently, nobody has informed these boys that while progressing through puberty, the male voice tends to be just slightly more appealing than driving nails through your eardrums. Unfortunately, they seem to think that this brand of singing works for their personal brand of “screamoâ€. And I guess it’s kind of good, if you like that particular genre.
Who am I kidding… it’s the equivalent of voluntarily deafening yourself. Somebody needs to get these guys a truckload of throat lozenges. Shove a couple dozen in their mouths then lock a vise around their heads until they are well and truly old enough to sing without their voices cracking on the upswing of every verse. To be honest, the music isn’t half-bad. I just wish they’d stop screaming like a bunch of pansy ass bitches. From a personal perspective, it’s almost as if they are trying to put a spin on such genre greats as The Used and Taking Back Sunday. It’s just… well… it’s almost as if they’re pouting. In each and every song. After about five songs of the same flagrantly self-possessed whining, it tends to become, oh, I dunno… extremely obnoxious.
Nearly every single track on this digital EP contains catchy melodies, but it’s ruined by the overly dramatic singing. The opening to Openly seems almost orgiastic in nature, what with all the heavy breathing and, well, the heavy breathing is primarily the essence of the song’s beginning. Not that I have any problem with orgies… I should really rephrase that, but I can’t think of anything else to say. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that this is a fairly enjoyable song with the punk pop style you’ve come to expect from Drive Thru Records, but it’s not very original. The first two songs on the list, ‘Wish For Alliance’ and ‘Ex-Suits’, are fairly ruined by the ineffective shrieking. The immediacy from the instrumentals that I would expect for this volume of screaming just isn’t there. ‘Coughing Up Blood’ is probably the best of all of the tracks when is comes to harmonizing between the lead and backup vocals and the drum line is bluntly effective as the beat leads the song. As for ‘Jaime’, it’s pure rubbish. After the power these boys were advertising in their earlier tracks, this song is completely inappropriate. The poppy beat and boy-bandesque vocals are simply nauseating.
Oh yeah, one more thing. Decide which continent you’re from, posers. I have never in my entire life met anyone from California that sounded like they just stepped off the plane from Britain. The English accent ain’t gonna fly with most punk fanatics, since pretending to be something you’re not tends to be very high on most fans’ “Things For Which I Will Make Someone A Bloody Pulp†list. ‘Talks/sings with a fake accent’ generally falls right after ‘Owns an Avril CD’. Just a little heads up for the extremely obnoxious.
I gave up trying to be PC about this review right around revision number three, so I’ll just say it. Whenever I listen to Jenoah a mental image pops into my head of a bunch of messily coifed, sun-bleached, limp-wristed beach aficionados bouncing around screeching at each other about imagined slights and mutual love interests. The designated gender of said interests is up to anyone’s speculation. Not that I have any room to criticize these guys in area outside of their musical talent, nor, to be truthful, do I even have the background to critique that. For the most part, my issues tend to be with the extremely obnoxious image the boys of Jenoah seem to be trying to project, not the quality of their work. For a quick summarization the main point is that this is solid musicianship, although not exactly stellar in the lyrical and vocal departments, but decent stuff nonetheless.
Do yourself a favor and download the tracks off of the Drive Thru site. Don’t bother with the streaming audio, the crew running the site have apparently never heard the terms “widen†and “bandwidth†in the same sentence. It’s only possible to keep one track open at a time after the temp download and you can’t save the song from this interface. While you’re at it, make sure you have some time to kill since each time you close the window after registering, you have to submit yourself to the same process. Yep, that’s right, you must surrender your personals during every long in and the download is going to take you ten minutes at the very least, which is all extremely obnoxious. Or you could just skip the whole process and be no worse for wear. Depends on if you’ve got a death wish for your auditory nerves.
You can download this EP from www.drivethrurecords.com
Nicole