Review Summary: A good effort from Nonpoint.
I have never in my entire life come across a band that can spew out as much kinetic energy as Nonpoint. This four-piece from Fort Lauderdale, Florida came out during the Nu-metal scene of the late 90's. Their debut, Separate Yourself, garnered almost no attention from people outside of the Fort Lauderdale area. Fast forward one more year and we have Struggle. Again, not much attention was given to this album. You would think with their first two albums being almost unknown to the public eye they would give up right? Wrong. The band released their third LP (which some people consider their first) and it was pretty successful to say the least. Of course its singles Endure and What a Day weren't MTV hits, the album was still solid.
So why isn't this band more popular? Is it due to the fact they are sometimes shrugged off as some poor Nu-metal act? Or was the band just not on their record labels high priority list? We may never know. The good thing is, they're a good band. From the minute Mindtrip hits to the very last second of Tribute, this album holds up. Mindtrip is a fast paced, in your face song that is plagued with repetition. This however works for this track. After your mind is done tripping, you get a brief moment of silence until Elias (vocalist) yells "F**k that!" into your ears. Victim is its name, and making you uncontrollably head bang is its game. Yeah, it's pretty rockin'. The next track Endure was the first single off this album, and I can see why. It's fast and you can relate to it. This brings up something that I feel must be said. Call Nonpoint Nu-metal if you like, but the one thing that really separates them from the rest of the crowd is the lyrics. For instance, Endure is about always having to do stuff for the higher authorities while they just laze around and you get nothing for you hard work.
Throughout the album the tracks are heavy as hell and just make you feel good. Nonpoint even decided to through in some of their heritage on the album. Orgullo (which translates to "pride" in Puerto Rican) is a song about being proud of your culture, no matter where you're from. The inclusion of this track really adds some flavor to the album.
Now surely there has to be some bad things that prevented me from giving it a perfect five, right? Well, yes. Some of the tracks sound a bit to much like each other at times. But this can be forgiven. Overall Nonpoint delivers with an eccentric album that will most certainly go on my list of best albums of this decade.
