If the anonymous pronouns used throughout this album were given names, The End Is Not The End<\/i> would be a bona fide rock opera. It\u2019s that ambitious in scope and electrifying in execution. The seventeen tightly-crafted ballyhoos on this Christian rock band\u2019s fourth LP flit from Christ to war to love to brotherhood and often intertwine the four, like on the tender \u201cBy Your Side.\u201d Two brothers enroll in the army together and faintly tell each other, \u201cI\u2019ll be by your side on the other side\u201d before the acoustic guitar balefully fades away one refrain too early. The different themes and idylls lack the cohesion that makes a rock opera an opera<\/i>, but maybe such broadness keeps The End Is Not The End<\/i> from becoming overblown whimsy.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeave You Now\u201d shows a poppier, garage rock side of the band, not too distant from some of Phantom Planet\u2019s best stuff. Hand claps punctuate the sloppy guitar riffs and glossy vocal harmonies. Like Green Day, House Of Heroes take a poppy approach to conceptual rock albums, and it keeps the more ambitious tracks from floating too high. Even the proselytizing bridge of \u201cVoices\u201d is restituted by the cutting guitar riffs and soulful background vocals.<\/p>\n
The End Is Not The End<\/i> is an unusually long album, but the songs stay consistently sinewy throughout. Small, shadowy splashes of organ peer out from behind marching snare drums on the great \u201cField Of Daggers\u201d before the chorus erupts. The song sequencing is often fluent and logical, befitting the theatrical vision of the album. \u201cNew Moon\u201d follows \u201cField Of Daggers\u201d before softly dipping into the concluding track, \u201cGhost,\u201d a doleful but quietly glorious eulogy to lost love.<\/p>\n
It might be a little daunting to go through all seventeen tracks of The End Is Not The End<\/i>, but it\u2019s a record that grows prettier and better with time. Some online reviewers have overrated this album, with one especially hyperbolic writer calling it the best record of 2008. House Of Heroes are far from such acclaim, but their addition to underground pop rock is modest and memorable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":78,"featured_media":30068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[8465],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-41703","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-house-of-heroes","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41703","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\/78"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41703"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41703"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}