Friday, February 12, 2016

Sleep When You're Dead - ALIVE, AWAKE, FOREVER Album Review

Sleep When You're Dead - ALIVE, AWAKE, FOREVER

Album art from their Bandcamp page,
Sleep When You're Dead is/was a hardcore band from Oshawa, Ontario.The topic of today's review ALIVE, AWAKE, FOREVER is the third release from this band.

Sleep When You're Dead does hardcore and they do it well. Southern twang  guitars and aggressive guitars fill the eardrums on each of their releases. This album shows a band completely enveloped with their defined sound, now this can be either a bad thing or a good thing depending on your tastes and what you expect from this band.

That being said, what we have here is expertly crafted, finely tuned, engaging music. My time listening to this album made me happy to be listening to something with grit, easing my way back to aggressive music (I've been listening to 70's and 80's albums non-stop for a long while now).

The album is peppered with moments of slowdown and brooding tones that lead up into driving beats that lock you into their grooves and get your head bobbing. The moments of quiet don't last long or bog down the flow of the album, everything comes to a high then to a carefully broken up beat with high accents like harmonics and solos diversifying the frequency pool nicely. There is a nice balance between the drums and the distorted bass that really keeps everything in check and lets the guitars and vocals breathe leading up to those grooves I mentioned earlier. 

As much as I like this album a review wouldn't be a review without discussing points I feel could have been improved on. Firstly, I feel as though this album plays it too safe by sticking to the formula. almost like everything sits in the same pocket. They give us what we want but they don't give us something we didn't know we wanted. In comparison to their last release, we're left feeling a little disenchanted.

All in all, this is a really solid release from a great band and I'm truly saddened to hear this will be their last release. Do yourself a solid and pick up this album, you have nothing to lose anyway because its been given away for free (link at the bottom). Thanks for all the great times and tunes guys it's been a blast. 

7/10






Notable songs: Only Grey, Moving Through It, Folded Hearts, 

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