Review Summary: Rough and inconsistent but with promise.
A Day to Remember were a very young band at the time of this release, only having been together for a mere year before this EP's release. This is something that's incredibly obvious on this demo, with elements of pop punk, emo, post-hardcore and soft/acoustic rock all blended together over the various tracks, but absent of the polish they’d later deliver on “For Those Who Have Heart”. A lot of tweaking was required before they could hit upon that sound and become mainstream darlings in the scene.
To this end, the EP begins with “Breathe Hope in Me”, a track that essentially features every single style they’d try out on this EP into one song. The first minute is a soft, slow intro unlike any other ADTR opening which explodes into mid-tempo pop punk with harsh vocals scantily used as flourishes to the track. Beyond the style and tempo changes, this song isn’t too impressive.
The standouts are, however, the tracks "If Looks Could Kill..." and "Last Request". As the name implies, the former is an earlier version of the track which appeared on "And Their Name Was Treason". What was a middle-of-the-road track on "Treason" becomes far superior on this release, with the rawer vocals delivering far more passion than the version on the debut album.
This is the only song that really uses harsh vocals extensively, in addition to featuring the only breakdown on the EP. It is very telling that it’s the only song they saw fit to include on the debut release, as it’s probably the closest ADTR comes to their modern sound. It’s not exactly identical to the version featured on Treason, with the song leaning more towards an emo/pop punk mix in terms of structure and vibe rather than metalcore. It suits the song a lot better than the car-crash way it’s blended together on their debut, with them still working out the subtleties of their heavier side.
“Last Request” is the best track on the EP. Similar to the previous track, it’s essentially an emo/pop punk song with some post-hardcore flourishes somewhat reminiscent of Taking Back Sunday. It’s strange to me that they didn’t pursue this sound a little more, as there isn’t really any other ADTR song quite like this one on any of their later releases despite how effective it is here.
The final two tracks are both acoustic, neither of which are particularly interesting lyrically or musically. ADTR's acoustic/softer tracks have never been their stronger material (with the exception of If It Means A Lot To You and the recent Forgive and Forget) and this isn't any different here. It does however go to show that ADTR have never been a band that focuses too much on their heaviness, even in their earlier days. The only reason I figure two tracks of this kind were featured was because this EP was recorded in merely a day, so they were likely struggling to getting all their material together and ready, figuring acoustic material would easier to fill up the time.
It would be difficult to connect to this release to their later material without “Treason” showing the way they eventually developed their sound. They hadn’t quite added so much of a metalcore element to their sound yet, as the heavier elements of their release come off more as post-hardcore flourishes more than anything to their core pop-punk sound. Still, it's clear that at this point they were still trying new things to see what worked and luckily they did, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten great albums later down the line such as "For Those Who Have Heart" and "Homesick". Definitely worth checking out if you're a big fan of the band.
Recommended Tracks:
+If Looks Could Kill... Then You'd Be Dead
+Last Request
