minorthreat78's Full Review: Drive By Monologue by The Hurt Process
Y'know, it wasn't until fairly recently that I'd noticed that, for all its relative success and popularity in this country, there aren't exactly a lot of foreign bands treading into the conflagration of genre typified by bands like Jimmy Eat World, Thrice and Thursday and generally viewed as under the umbrella of "emo". Their odd mix-n-match approach (throw nu-metal, hardcore, pop, hard rock and grunge into a blender and frappe) is certainly well-liked and copied in this country (tell me Blink-182 wouldn't have made that album without Jimmy Eat World or the Get-Up Kids?). Wouldn't it stand to reason that it could succeed in other countries?
Well, the Welsh band lostprophets seem to be doint all right with it, and if the British music hype magazines are to be trusted (and they really aren't), Bristol-based band The Hurt Process could very well succeed in the land of alternative rock radio as well.
On Drive-By Monologue, The Hurt Process seem to have gotten the basic framework down pat. Simple punk melodies with occasional bursts of hardcore energy, the periodic moments of harmony juxtaposed with angry yelping, the classic lyrical themes of hating your girlfriend, hating yourself, hating your ex-girlfriend because she left you because you were so busy hating yourself, and then wanting to kill yourself because you made your girlfriend leave you because you hate yourself. Not too original, perhaps, but hey, its a first album. If they want to copycat Thursday, its hardly an issue for me.
What is a bit of an issue for me is that the album's sound is just as unoriginal as the band's structure. "This Piece" and "White Butterflies" could just as easily have come from Thursday's Full Collapse, and the tepid "Clarity" sounds like a Dashboard Confessional reject. Much of this album sounds like a British knock-off of American alternative radio circa 2002.
Combine that with the somewhat generic vocals (insert nasal-voiced geeky white guy) and the uninspired (though not bad) musicianship, and you have another album that feels pretty much the same as dozens of other albums that come from the second wave of an emerging musical style.
That said, while the album feels like a re-tread, it really isn't all that bad. Personally, I feel the album is a bit too slickly-polished, and a few tracks aren't all that great. "Clarity" is way too whiny for my tastes, and I'm not too fond of "Last Goodbye". It isn't a bad album, but I don't consider it interesting or enjoyable enough to recommend.
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