Review Summary: Less of a nostalgia trip and more of a rude awakening in regards to the state of Adema in 2013.
Adema has certainly had a troubled career. They've only been going downhill in popularity since their first album and matters certainly weren't helped by the number of vocalists they've gone through - they're currently on their
FIFTH singer as of 2019. But nevertheless, they press on and they released this EP after 6 years of no output as a reminder so that people can say "Oh, damn, they're still around?" All this EP will do, however, is just make people who didn't like them in the first place say "Oh, sh
it, they got even worse?"
First off - the new songs.
Resolution is decent and would probably be a lot better with Marky on it. It doesn't stand up to even the worst songs from their first 2 albums though. The title track would be absolutely abysmal regardless of who would sing on it and I couldn't wait for it to f
ucking end.
Lions was a pleasant surprise and the alt rock sound is much better suited for Tim's vocals (because he sure as hell can't do Marky's vocal style well). Easily the best song on this release. If they were gonna do any more songs with Tim as a singer, this is the kind of sound they should go with.
Now we get to the re-recordings of their older songs and oh lord... What's the point of re-recording your old songs if you're just do them so much worse? They might as well be karaoke versions, because they sound so incredibly cheap instrumentally.
Unstable gets off pretty lightly, although it just makes you wish you were listening to the original. For a song titled
Immortal - it sure sounds pretty lifeless. It sounds like Tim sung it right after waking up. But if you thought his singing was bad - his "harsh" vocals are even worse. He doesn't even sound like he's trying. As usual, the vocals on
Planets are inferior to the original but like
Lions, I wasn't sitting there thinking "I really wish somebody else was singing this." That's not exactly high praise though. All I can say about
Giving In is that it's far from the worst one here as well - the harsher vocals are still awful however.
Adema may have intended this EP to serve as a reminder that "Hey, we're still around, and still rockin' hard!" but all it wound up being is a desperate advertisement to let sympathetic souls know that they need a new vocalist. And thankfully Ryan Shuck, formerly a guitarist in Orgy is their new vocalist and certainly doing a much better job judging by the live videos. If you listen to anything from this release, check out
Lions. Unsurprisingly, they haven't played anything from this release live since 2013, cause why the hell would they? Nor is this album on Spotify, because I'm fairly certainly they would want people to forget about this one. Let's hope that if they release anything else, that it's much better than this one. It can't possibly be worse.
