Being As An Ocean’s self titled album is the bands third in four years and the band are developing their unique sound further in this album.
The song Ain’t Nobody Perfect opens with a catchy, pleasant melody overlaying and interesting abstract guitar progression. The song is heavily spoken with a balanced combination of screams, clean vocals and some cut up vocals. The lead guitar riffs seem sort of synth-like in places and whilst the screams aren’t the strongest and are more shouted, it works for the band’s sound.
Sleeping Sicarii shows off the bands more punk influences with heavy snare-written drums in the first part of the song. Shouted vocals and a catchy, easy-to-listen-to chorus help demonstrate the bands ability to write a sing along chorus. The song also shows off the guitarists ability to write complex, impressive riffs.
The drums throughout the record are high paced and show off the drummer’s clear ability to write an impressive fill and beat to suit a song and it’s clear he has influences in many styles, such as punk (Sleeping Sicarii) and post hardcore (The Zealots Blindfold). Unfortunately, the guitarists seem to lack the same creativeness and seem to just recycle the same 5 riffs with some varying notes throughout the album – but if somethings not broken why fix it?
The vocals throughout the album aren’t the most diverse but their use of combining varying vocal styles to create texture is a clever move. The vocalists don’t have an huge vocal range so having lots of vocal styles mixes it up so it’s not just boring. The shouts (they’re more shouts then screams) are strong and emotional, but could use some different pitches. The clean vocals are a bit whiney but the suit the music and spoken words are nice to hear, but they’re not captivating enough so that you actually listen to whats being said.
Overall, it’s an okay album, the band are writing album after album and I think they might be sacrificing creativity for the sake of a new record. The instrumentation is well performed but a little repetitive and it could help if the band branched out to new influences to maybe broaden their writing style.
6/10
