Review Summary: it’s quiet now, like the moments after a murder.
White Rabbit is a surprisingly irritating album. In their debut album, Egypt Central were already quite an average nu-metal/alt metal band, but they at the very least, showed some promise – apparently they broke their promise. They had the potential to be the next big thing, but all hope is shattered with this album, which sees them giving up any of the fire they ever possessed. It gets worse than that though. The band, with their lack of punch and continuation of generic downfalls, look much too similar to many a popular post grunge or hard rock band. If you’ve seen them in concert, you might expect great things from Egypt Central considering their energetic live delivery, but it seems that they’ve sold out on us.
White Rabbit is the perfect radio material, and it also sounds like Pillar’s worst album (
For the Love of the Game) – it is quite lacking. Melody is the focus in
White Rabbit, but the album still lacks focus. You can hear the band struggling to find a sound that will fit them, as they never settle on one. To be honest, there are a ton of great melodies and memorable choruses in the album, but they are given little justice. Egypt Central are much more convincing when they write fist-pumping, blatant WWE songs, not when they attempt pretty songs. Therefore, more rocking cuts like ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Down in Flames’ are where it’s at, but more often than not, they choose the generic path with boring or subpar songs: ‘Goodnight’, ‘The Drug Pt. 1’, ‘Enemy Inside Pt. 2’. The rest of the album is mostly filled with ineffective songs or ones that just try too hard.
Despite a suffocating load of crap, the album isn’t all bad. ‘Ghost Town’ is a moody, southern rock number that screams edgy; the album could have used a lot more of the edginess that this song exudes. Even an awful song like ‘Kick Ass’ is refreshing because of its, well, kick ass attitude. Like ‘Kick Ass’, there are other songs that also work and probably shouldn’t. The final track, ‘Backfire’, is Egypt Central’s first acoustic number, and with John Falls’ attempted falsetto, the song is surprisingly nice. Then there’s the excellent song, ‘Change’, that is so good it makes the rest of the album look like trash (which is already quite easy to do).
You may have noticed many song references in this review, and may I assure you that they were mentioned for a purpose. You see, when all is said and done,
White Rabbit is entirely hit or miss, with only a few standout tracks. The band is facing a bit of an identity crisis, where they shift between kicking ass, and getting their own asses kicked. If anything, Egypt Central is setting the stage to kiss ass instead of kicking them, but this isn’t the Egypt Central we once knew. This is a strange phase in the band’s career that I doubt will ever pass, after all, this band was never that impressive to begin with.
