First of all, Chasing Victory is a crappy band name. After many years writing about music, I don’t think I’ve ever encountered any band that is chasing anything — think the Coyote and Roadrunner — because, rather, bands achieve goals, the most popular one being to tour the world\u00a0 and get the opposite sex at the end of the night. There is nothing about being in a band that involves chasing anything that would lead to victory. The only exception I can think of is the band Chasing Amy, but their singer turned into The Bachelor so they don’t really count.<\/p>\n
Anhway, sorry. “Selling Out Ain’t Easy” encapsulates this band’s musical direction on Fiends, <\/i>a pretty good disc from this poorly-named band. It’s when this song switches easily between a low-intensity verse and a high-intensity chorus that the listener will begin to pay attention. The lyrics engage active listening when vocalist Adam Harrell sings, “I’ve been feeling kind of sick to my stomach \/ it’s just a gimmick but the kids seem to love it \/ and if you’re patient you can witness a sellout \/ I’m not a killer but Hollywood’s going to drown \/ and if you’re feeling original, don’t let it go to your head \/ it’s all been done before \/ you’re not the first one.” <\/p>\n
The next track “The Skeleton Key to a Skeleton” is equally appealing. When Harrell couples his intense delivery with the pointed declaration “Freeze the frame where I take the blame,” I smiled. <\/p>\n
Drummer Jeremy Lowery adds a sense of driving — okay, chasing — beat with his frequent drum fills and interesting timekeeping patterns. He does not seem content to provide the backbeat or to merely be the tempo-keeper. Instead, tracks like “Dr. Jekyll\/Stephen Hyde” provide a playground for his skills to be put on display. Yet, when the song calls for a simpler approach, as it does on “Oceans Away the Sequel,” Lowery is content to power the song along — the mark of a classy drummer.<\/p>\n
After nearly 40 minutes, this turns out to be a mostly remarkable release. It’s not the best in this hybrid genre of hardcore \/ metal \/ alternative, but it is at least interesting. Yes, that is a trombone that pops up on “G.O.B. Vs Tony Wonder” and that last track is pronounced “Crack’ll Rot Your Teeth Out.” <\/p>\n
About the only other flaw is whomever designed this CD and made the lyrics so hard to read. It’s a shame because this band has a lot of strong lyrics that require a booklet. It’s a shame the band hinders the ability of their listeners to take their material to a deeper level in this way, but the quality of the music makes up for it, for the most part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7994],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40386","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-chasing-victory","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40386"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}