I don’t know if Fat are trying to snap up soundalike bands or not, but there’s a definite Smoke or Fire comparison when you listen to this record. That same kind of skate-punk vibe that the label kind of got famous for way back in the day. And while you can’t say all the Fat bands sound the same, while Epitaph seem to have gone to one extreme and signed bands of totally different styles, Fat have stuck to their roots. They know what they like and they do it well.
That said, ‘The Great Awake’ isn’t a cure for insomnia. It’s not a bad record, but there’s definitely a feeling you’ve heard it all before. Sure, the choruses are strong, the vocals raspy and the guitars chug and pop along in equal measure, but there’s little here to get me excited enough to want to check this band out further. While the songs are relatively short throughout, and certainly sub 3-minutes, I did get a bit bored as the album wore on. Strangely, the epic ‘KHTDR’ is about double the length of every other song and yet had enough variations to keep me interested.
A decent record, certainly one for fans of Fat Wreck’s last few outputs, but nothing to really write home about. While the heart may not have stopped beating just yet, [insert crappy flatlining punchline here].