Without meaning to sound pessimistic, I absolutely love being set up for a fall…listen to this; “The album hits like a revelation, jolting the listener upright and transporting them from a dreamy landscape to a wide-eyed state of consciousness textured by humility and sandblasted by the winds that weather life”…it sounds amazing doesn’t it? You read that and think who the hell is this?! Well…let me tell you…this is a snippet from a bio by Las Vegas rockers OTHERWISE. Yes, clearly they spent most of their creative energy on their biography, and settled for one of the most mundane sounding band names of all time in the process…but the question now is, will we truly be swept away by their newest album “Sleeping Lions”…or…are they musically as beige as their own name? Let’s find out…
The album opens up with “Angry Heart” and after a brief period of guitar feedback we’re met with some fairly standard metal-tinged hard rock riffs…vocally Adrian Patrick is relatively clean, especially within an admittedly catchy chorus, aided by gang-vocal backing…the bass here is on occasion reminiscent of KORN in subtle ways, and I mention this purely to state that, bassist Tony Carboney has a better name than the band he plays in…say them both out loud…told you. If I may get back on track, we follow up with the title track and we get more generally run of the mill American alternative radio rock…fans of say, THEORY OF A DEADMAN or NICKELBACK and the like would probably enjoy this…what I’m certainly not getting, is the dreamy landscape or the feeling of being sandblasted by, anything to be honest, other than, mediocrity…it’s fine, but they set the bar so high with their bio that, this falls so far short…
There are a couple of pleasant tracks on offer here if I’m totally honest, such as “Suffer” with its pop rock melodic tendencies providing easy listening, while “Nothing To Me” drops some solid hard rock hooks…there is a slower fill mid-track which sounds out of place that detracts from an otherwise enjoyable song, before “Weapons” gives us our first real album highlight with it’s incredibly catchy pop qualities…the rest of the album however goes completely arse over tit via its own determination to appease the mighty god Chad Kroeger…just listen to “Crocodile Tears” and “Dead In The Air”…honestly it’s as if they climbed up into the Canadian’s arse, crawled directly into his brain and had him write them songs like some sort of parasitic infection…either that or there’s a case for plagiarism here…”Blame” on the other hand is effectively yawn inducing while, “Bloodline Lullaby” just…shoot me, someone…anyone? This is every clichéd romantic movie epiphany / last dance soundtrack rolled into one song…”Won’t Stop” ends things on a livelier note but, it redeems nothing. They promised the world and more in their biography and what they delivered was nothing more than a rip-off of a rock music meme…Sleeping Lions? Sleeping Gav…[4]
The album opens up with “Angry Heart” and after a brief period of guitar feedback we’re met with some fairly standard metal-tinged hard rock riffs…vocally Adrian Patrick is relatively clean, especially within an admittedly catchy chorus, aided by gang-vocal backing…the bass here is on occasion reminiscent of KORN in subtle ways, and I mention this purely to state that, bassist Tony Carboney has a better name than the band he plays in…say them both out loud…told you. If I may get back on track, we follow up with the title track and we get more generally run of the mill American alternative radio rock…fans of say, THEORY OF A DEADMAN or NICKELBACK and the like would probably enjoy this…what I’m certainly not getting, is the dreamy landscape or the feeling of being sandblasted by, anything to be honest, other than, mediocrity…it’s fine, but they set the bar so high with their bio that, this falls so far short…
There are a couple of pleasant tracks on offer here if I’m totally honest, such as “Suffer” with its pop rock melodic tendencies providing easy listening, while “Nothing To Me” drops some solid hard rock hooks…there is a slower fill mid-track which sounds out of place that detracts from an otherwise enjoyable song, before “Weapons” gives us our first real album highlight with it’s incredibly catchy pop qualities…the rest of the album however goes completely arse over tit via its own determination to appease the mighty god Chad Kroeger…just listen to “Crocodile Tears” and “Dead In The Air”…honestly it’s as if they climbed up into the Canadian’s arse, crawled directly into his brain and had him write them songs like some sort of parasitic infection…either that or there’s a case for plagiarism here…”Blame” on the other hand is effectively yawn inducing while, “Bloodline Lullaby” just…shoot me, someone…anyone? This is every clichéd romantic movie epiphany / last dance soundtrack rolled into one song…”Won’t Stop” ends things on a livelier note but, it redeems nothing. They promised the world and more in their biography and what they delivered was nothing more than a rip-off of a rock music meme…Sleeping Lions? Sleeping Gav…[4]
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