I think if you looked this band up in the dictionary you’d get the description “generic band playing popular genre of music known as ‘screamo'” – or something very similar at least. It’s not that Last Message To Houston are particularly bad, but they’re just boring. This three track EP, by the looks of it the band’s first, just screams of unoriginality. All three tracks blend into one another and, as I was driving in the car, I had to look at the CD display panel to see which track we were on. The vocals are flat all the way through, with generic shouty/screamy parts littering a turgid de-tuned riff that blobs out of the speakers rather than roars like a Lion. It’s like there’s a lack of passion and energy here – everything is just played, rather than performed with any vigour.
All three tracks are pretty bland. I cannot tell you the names of the songs as nowhere on the CD case, or on the disc itself, is a list – a bit of a schoolboy error not to list the track names on the art, but we’ll chalk that up to inexperience. Still, it’s pretty indicative of what this EP is all about really – none of the songs have names because they just mould into one (maybe). Being talented musicians, which these fellas clearly are, is one thing. But ripping off a hundred other bands and being worse than all of them is not a good thing. Punktastic receives two or three demos every day that sound like this – somebody, somewhere, please save a team of ailing reviewers by at least trying something that doesn’t want to be Atreyu…
www.lastmessagetohouston.com
Paul