Review Summary: A more polished sound works in 4Lyn's favor.
After the rather painful 'Neon', 4Lyn comes back with a more mature attitude that pays off on their third album, 'Take It As A Compliment'.
I'll get the negative out of the way first. This album has 4Lyn's absolutely worst song ever, entitled the 'Chikken Song'. All I will say is that this should've never been recorded. It's incredibly simplistic and whiny, and melody is way to thin. It's difficult to describe, but imagine the absolute worst punk pop melded with downtuned guitars.
Now, that that's out of the way. 4Lyn plays hard rock music. Their early albums leaned much more towards the rap-rock side, but with this album they decided to try some new ideas and show off their songwriting skills. This works out to their advantage, and results in an album that rocks hard and doesn't sound so focused in being as juvenile as possible. The rapping has been toned down significantly as singer Braz concentrates more on singing.
4Lyn takes a more polished approach with this album. "Kisses of a Strobelight" is straight up hard pop-rock, with a chorus that'll get stuck in your head. "Incomplete" is an excellent track, building up to a great, stomping chorus.
The best song here is by far "Syndrome", 2 and a half minutes of pure energy, along with the infectious vocals of singer Braz.
Album closer 'Good Life Period' opens up with an almost industrial sounding drum loop, then moving into a nu-metal groove.
'S.T.C.' is one of the heaviest songs here. Now when I say heavy I'm being relative to this album. It is a very angry song filled with screaming. Fans of Drowning Pool will dig this track.
The album shows off a lot of production value and is filled with drum loops and guitar effects which give the songs color.
It's not perfect, it's not terribly original and the aforementioned Chikken Song is garbage.
At it's core, it's just another hard rock album, but it does deliver energetic and catchy tunes and has 4Lyn going into the right direction, which paid off with their excellent following albums, 'Compadres' and 'Hello'.
If you're into Papa Roach with a slightly more harder edge, give this one a try.
