Review Summary: A short sunrise set to be eclipsed by a swift sunset
LeBron James perhaps is the biggest thing ever to make it out of Akron, Ohio. Hard rock five-piece Red Sun Rising will be lucky to break the American Rust Belt city’s top 50. The quintet’s major label debut
Polyester Zeal practically guarantees such an obscure fate when the dust settles.
Sure, their fortunes are looking up now. Decent single “The Otherside” is just starting to draw notice from the fringes of hard rock radio’s conscious. No doubt the boost in exposure from currently opening for Pop Evil and a future tour fulfilling the same role for Godsmack advances the cause. Pity it’s a
doomed cause.
Outside of signaling the beginning of the end,
Polyester Zeal’s only significance is its relative insignificance. It amply shows Red Sun Rising is a good imitator of the meat-and-potatoes, gritty yet sleek post-grunge that was popular in what seems like a lifetime ago, i.e., the mid-to-late 90s and early 2000s. You know, when Nickelback
was both good and “too bad” (now it’s just the latter); Fuel was raging about “love bleeding” through hands; Creed was taking us “higher"; Default was “wasting time”; Matchbox Twenty was all about pushing dames around and taking them “for granted”; and Live was searching for spiritual meaning in natural phenomena like when a “placenta falls to the floor.” In the words of Local H, things were “copacetic” back then.
So, not only can you not find any such lyrics that induce reaching for the dictionary on
Polyester Zeal – though there are trite grumblings about “blood” on “hands” and whatnot on the conspicuously titled “Blister” – it comes as no surprise that what Red Sun Rising lacks in substance, the group equally falls short in originality. With the droning vocals and guitar chugging, “Amnesia,” “The Otherside” and “My Muse” indicates these guys listened to a lot of Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam back in the day. Speaking of muses, vocalist Mike Protich and company clearly are also fans of Tool, given the stripped down, low rhythms and Protich’s performance on “Emotionless,” though his voice throughout closer resembles Alter Bridge’s Myles Kennedy than Maynard Keenan.
Undoubtedly, Red Sun Rising's members are technically competent enough to bring to mind all these greater acts, but the comparison doesn’t exactly flatter. Instead of invoking nostalgia and taking their influences and attempting something remotely interesting with them,
Polyester Zeal is paying mere lip service rather than tribute to their idols. The LP sounds like a cover band was suddenly asked to write original material to land a record deal and defaulted into what it’s always done to meet the deadline: shameless duplication. For instance, mid-tempo anthems like “Emotionless,” “Blister” and “Unnatural” boast similar hooks and should have been consolidated into a singular effort, demonstrating that Red Sun Rising was really scraping the bottom of its songwriting barrel.
As such, there’s no disputing the safe and tepid
Polyester Zeal accentuates how
extremely dated the record plays. I mean, mainstream rock moves at a languid pace between trends, but this fossil is nearly two decades late. Given how boring “Push” and “World’s Away” are, they’re probably the most obsolete, though frankly every track is culpable.
That's the strongest reason why these Midwest boys are going nowhere. Despite a handful of inoffensively pleasant melodies, there’s not nearly enough creativity or flair for this album to make any more of a dent than it already has in the age of saturated genres. Knocking off Nickelback and stealing from Staind nowadays won’t win any long-term converts.
Polyester Zeal proves Red Sun Rising is just a cover group copying, a dead band delaying the inevitable.
Consider these words the unofficial eulogy.
Recommended tracks:
"Amnesia"
"Blister"
