Review Summary: An obscure band playing to their strengths like never before.
Of all the obscure bands that I’ve found on the Internet, DramaScream might be the one I have the most mixed feelings about. They blend hard rock with alternative influences well and while their overall sound is very basic, they surely can make up for it with energy and undeniable catchiness. Suffice to say, the potential is apparent and on their debut, the band largely lived up to it. With
In Your Mind though, they somehow doubled down on everything that didn’t work previously and cut on everything that did, producing a record plagued by bland guitar work, amateurish singing and a striking lack of substance, despite featuring two of their most engaging songs in “Fire” and “Phrenic”. Thus, it was with true excitement that on the New Yorkers’ third release, I found those drawbacks totally absent. The title is fitting:
Revive revitalized the band’s sound, building upon their potential while gracefully avoiding every single pitfall that the full-lengths more or less often fell into.
Revive is structured very tightly, leaving no room for dragging nor sounding undercooked. Each song consists of short, yet fully fleshed out sections connected by swift and seamless transitions. The drumming is as engaging as ever – the rhythms are spot on, fills aplenty and Justin steals the show with particularly aggressive performance during the title track’s bridge. However, his work isn’t the sole consistent highlight. The guitar lines are still simplistic to a fault, but effectively assembled; the slightly djenty bridge and harmonized outro of “What I’ve Become”, the post-chorus riff in the title track and the rumbling basslines in “Come Play” being a few examples of them perfectly fitting the material. Then, of course, we have the vocals – this time not undercut by repetitiveness and shallow or off-key notes. Lauren makes full use of her range as she churns out hook after hook and drops a batch of fun accents in the mix, with well-timed rasp, vibrato and even some almost operatic tidbits. On top of that, the singing is excellently layered; this is one aspect of the EP’s fine production, otherwise shown by satisfyingly loud and clear instrumentals. The most questionable part of DramaScream’s latest outing are, ironically, the screams, which come in two varieties: the more normal harsh vocals, and high screeches most similar to a loud kettle whistle. While Lauren is not a particularly proficient screamer, these would sound far better if the kettle whistle wasn’t being layered on nearly every regular scream. With that said,
Revive is ultimately an all-around fun EP that, despite being far from mindblowing upon deconstruction, manages to be more than the sum of its parts.
