Everything you thought you knew about this band, their music, and this genre is about to get tossed into the windmill and chopped to shreads. When an album begins with the line, “we will cheat you out of everything .. we will sell you who you are” – there is very little else that is needed to grab you by your throat and push you against the wall. The music beat pulses into your chest, your head expands and contracts with each riff and you can’t help but let your head rock to the music.
I think of the sound as a mix between a much catchier Thursday (minus any screaming) and Further Seems Forever with hints of indie-rock, pop-punk, and emo.
The album begins with “Control,” before bleeding seamlessly from track to track – each song seeming to surpass the one before it. While each song maintains the album theme and has the very unique and fresh Name Taken sound – they are all individual songs that stand alone and refuse to allow the listener to become stagnant and feel as if they are listening to one song on repeate. Hard, soft, mellow, fast, intellegent and witty – all words I would use to describe this album. My only problem with the album is that it’s only 11 songs, and that I refuse to believe that this is the band’s first official full-length. It blows my mind.
Above all what we have here is a release that, in my opinon, stands on it’s own by defying all labels that someone may try to affix to it. It will be one of the first albums that comes to my mind at the end of the year when I am thinking about the top albums of 2004, this much I know for sure. I never thought I could get rocked so hard by something so beautiful. You can tell the band put great thought into everything from the artwork, to the track listing, to the final verse – all in an effort to craft their story and theme into a musical masterpiece. The hype is dead. This is the real fucking deal.