Army
of Pirates
"X Marks the Rock" CD
Self-released
Genres: indie rock, emo, punk-rock
The Pirate Ship
114 Glenwood Ave.
Catonsville MD 21228
Aug 18 - 24 2003 |
Army
of Pirates is a new indie rock band out of Maryland who play
powerful, high-energy rock music with emo influences in the vocals. X
Marks the Rock, their new EP, is the first taste of their sound
available to the public. Unsurprisingly, there are good moments and
there are bad moments.
"Heaven on the Coast," the EP's first track, a noisy,
guitar-heavy rocker, is an okay moment; its melody is pretty catchy,
but the guitar can make the tune somewhat hard to listen to.
"Playing Fetch," the second tune, could be the most
unlistenable, uninteresting moment on this disc. The guitars try to
pull off loud and distorted at the same time as being high-pitched,
and effectively overpower all the other instruments. You'll skip over
this track or you'll suffer the headaches as consequence.
"Maybe" is one of the better tracks on X Marks the Rock;
it's a more restrained, emotional pop/rock tune that might fit in with
that whole teen flick soundtrack genre. "Sarah" is whiny and
becomes discordant and shoddy in the last minute. "They're All a
Waste of Time" is a love song that takes a punk rhythm and
juxtaposes slow, annoyingly half-spoken vocals on top of the
instrumentation - do I really need to go into why this doesn't work?
Army of Pirates need to work on their craft before they
attempt a debut album. The two good tracks on this album aren't really
anything special. This band is going to need to work on their
melodies, their music's atmosphere, and their subject matter (angst is
overdone, dudes) before they record again.
69%
Matt Shimmer
[Vitals: 5 tracks, distributed by the
band, released 2002] |
