Unless my senses are failing, this is a pretty good album...
Written: Mar 30 '04
Product Rating:
Pros: Some really great stuff here
Cons: Some stuff is not-so-great
The Bottom Line: A strong debut performance for Senses Fail, one whose quality suggests the band could soon be one of the major players in the emo scene.
minorthreat78's Full Review: From the Depths of Dreams [EP] [PA] by Senses Fail
Y'know, much can be inferred from the label for which an independent artist records albums. It's pretty easy, for example, to guess that a Nitro records artist is probably fast, vaguely old-school, skater punk. Or that a Century Media artist is metal with a goth edge.
Or, as the case is with Senses Fail's EP, From the Depths of Dreams, released on Drive-Thru Records, is probably a pop-punk/emo band. That's what Drive-Thru does; their big artists are bands like The Early November, The Starting Line, Something Corporate and New Found Glory; almost all fairly bland emo/pop-punk bands with sing-along choruses and fairly little substance.
Of course, the label also hosts Finch, a band that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike all the other bands previously described. While certainly falling under the umbrella of "emo", their music has a more aggressive note to it, with shades of metal and electronica influences.
Thank the gods that Senses Fail has more in common with Finch than New Found Glory; otherwise, even with the low $5.99 price tag on this CD at Target, it most likely would've been a rip-off.
Truthfully, if you are a fan of emo who likes anything harder than, say, Jimmy Eat World, this EP is probably worth your money. I mean, c'mon, $5.99? Its a pretty long EP, and most of the songs are good-to-great. Of course, you will have to be subjected to the first song on the album before it gets good.
The EP's opener, "Steven", is probably the best known song by the band. As far as songs go, it isn't bad; its just not that good. The song falls all too clearly into the "generic emo pop song" cliche of sounding too self-important, too whiny, and trying way too hard to sound catchy. And the hook (Good-bye, Ste-ev-en) is borderline-annoying.
Thankfully, the rest of the album is a marked improvement over the opener. Tracks like "Free Fall Without a Parachute" and "The Ground Folds" mix a pop-punk sound with nu-metal riffs and emo screams to make some quality tracks, and the one-two hardcore-inspired punch of "Bloody Romance" and "Dreaming a Reality" nearly matches the best of what bands like Finch and boysetsfire have produced in integrating metal and emo-core.
At the very least, the band does a nice job of avoiding a same-ness to their songs. While this may not make the album as aggressive as I prefer, I can certainly see how this might make the music fan not as into hardcore as I appreciate the band's talent. Add to this the sincere and better-than-average vocals, and you've got an album that, while far from classic, at least manages to stand out among the legions of bored college students out to make their name as the whiny front-man for some generic emo band.
While the opening track leaves much to be desired, and the final track on the EP, an acoustic version of "The Ground Folds", is a bit weak, most of From the Depths of Dreams is quite good, and some of it is exceptional. As I said earlier, if you're into emo, the album is probably worth buying due to the price. For others...well, if you like metal-tinged emo/punk, and don't mind a bit of whininess, this will probably suit you.
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![From the Depths of Dreams [EP] [PA] by Senses Fail](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/88/32/c7/2006752656-177x150-0-0.jpg)
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