Review Summary: No sophmore slump here. For All Those Sleeping rival A Day To Remember as the cheesiest, yet catchy pop-punk/metacore bands around.
For All Those Sleeping are a pop-punk/metalcore band from St. Cloud Minnesota. They released their debut album Cross Your Fingers back in 2010, and while that album brought nothing new to the table, it was still a very catchy and fun release.
The band described their new album Outspoken as a heavier album, which has not gone well for bands in the past. What we get is indeed a heavier album, both lyrically and musically. This band has a whole lot of passion, and it shows, especially in the lyrics. Gone are the cheesy lines about zombies or Freddy Krueger. Those lyrics are replaced by more thought out and passionate lyrics. Guitarist David Volgman-Stevens writes all of the lyrics and you can tell that he is pissed off about something. The lyrics talk are about a variety of subjects, including backstabbing, liars, bullies, abusive step fathers, and other varying subjects.
The album sounds just like Cross Your Fingers, just with more screaming and breakdowns. The band uses three vocalists,fry screamer and occasional clean vocalist Mike Champa, guitarist/screamer Jared Pierskalla and bassist London Snetsinger, who handles most of the clean vocal duties. Champa is a very above average screamer and does fry screams very well. His occasional growls are good as well. He has improved a lot since the last album, and has decided to not do a lot of cleans this time around which adds to the heaviness. Here is where the vocals get to be generic. Snetsinger is a very boring clean vocalist. While catchy at times, his voice is very whinny for the most part and never changes his tone. He stays at a higher pitch for most of the album and it really starts to get old.
Musically, this album sounds pretty much the same as Cross Your Fingers, just with a lot more breakdowns. The breakdowns are catchy at times, but like the clean vocals, get old very quickly. They have also added some dubstep to the album, which looks good on paper, but in reality it just does not sound good. Other samples are used here and there and do not add anything to the overall sound of the record.
Some songs that stand out are Follow My Voice, Turn Of The Century, Life On Fire, Shaken Not Stirred, Never Trust A Dead Man, and Backstabber.
There is no sophmore slump found here. For All Those Sleeping rival A Day To Remember as the cheesiet, yet catchy pop-punk/metalcore bands out there.
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