Considering that we get a huge amount of albums sent to our office every day, I figure there are bound to be some diamonds in the rough. That being said, I took it upon myself to sift through the towering piles of promotional CDs in our mailbox in hopes of finding that gem.
I'll begin this journey with an album that's been floating around the mail-pile without so much as a press release, begging to be selected for listening simply on its looks alone. Those looks are awful, with the album art being a watercolor painting of a lion that looks vaguely like some of my best work from kindergarten. The band is Ivoryline, and the album is There Came A Lion.
Admittedly, I had a small amount of hope that this album would be good based on two things. First, Ivoryline is from Tyler, the town that birthed fantasy-poppers Eisley. Plus it's only a 45-minute drive from my hometown of Palestine. The second reason is that the record is out on Tooth & Nail Records, a mostly hit-or-miss label featuring primarily Christian hardcore outfits, but also the home for Project 86's Truthless Heroes, a shining example of angsty modern rock.
Unfortunately, as soon as the album began my hopes were shattered, much like my hopes to "not drink so much this weekend" are shattered every time I see a bottle of Jack Daniels. The opening licks are all full of treble and devoid of bass, much like the Yellowcard records that I used to think were "teh roxorz!" in high school.
Don't get me wrong, they know how to write a hook, and there's not a single track on the record that isn't catchy enough to force its way into your brain and set up shop. But listening to this album alone in my room, my high-dollar, noise-cancelling headphones blasting the best pseudo-pop punk money can artificially produce in a studio, I wasn't sure whether to become a monk and swear off music altogether or simply embrace the horror that is Fall Out Boy.
The lyrics to the opening track "Day's End" offer "We should cry mercy, mercy at every day's end." Trust me, I was screaming it after five seconds. Granted, maybe I'm just being elitist and dismissing the record because it has a very mainstream sound. But then again, maybe I'm hating on it because it's awful - a truly horrible piece of same-old, same-old mediocrity. Remember how earlier I said we'd find some diamonds in the rough via this column? It looks like that's going to be rougher than I thought.
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