Review Summary: Busted boy hits the scene with a new band and a new EP influenced by one of the darkest authors around... And it's suprisingly good.
Fightstar - They Liked You Better When You Were Dead
If you're a fan of the author Chuck Palahnuik, then you may have found it hard to believe when an ex-boyband member jumps onto the post-hardcore scene with a debut song named directly after the author with a hint at his sadistic writing themes. In fact this whole EP is inspired by him and the motion picture of Fight Club, with the artwork even being based on lead actor Edward Norton. Or if that is what you were expecting the whole time, then congratulations you were right - But giving this a listen will most likely suprise you enough into giving it a second listen. So with Charlie Simpson quitting Busted, forming Fightstar and releasing an album inspired by Chuck Palahnuik, it seems already that he has taken a step forward in the world, creating a brand new path for himself and 3 other musicians.
Charlie Simpsons idea was to take a complete different direction in music and breakaway from the pop-genre which he quickly grew to dislike. With their very first single Palahnuiks Laughter (And first track on this EP) he seemed to have got it just right, as with the rest of the tracks on here it seemed to be that Fightstar had it in them to be the band that they wanted to be.
The songs flow into each other quite comfortably and the crescendo's of crashing choruses throughout the EP do not tire out. Here variation appears from song-to-song as well as through out the songs, for example Amethyst holds dark verses until the chorus kicks in with a powerful and all so dramatic chorus just like you'd expect from Fightstar, whereas Lost Like Tears in The Rain shows off more of their pop-rock side before introducing a heavier catchy chorus before jumping back into their pop-rock roots.
Aside from the fact that compared to the later re-done version of some of these songs for Grand Unification, a few of these songs sound as if they are demo's, but the structure of them and impact these songs make are something you would have expected from a band who had established themselves better before-hand. For me, that makes this EP stand out amongst my CD collection.
Fightstar make the best of all their instruments with They Liked You Better When You Were Dead, with no instrument being drowned out by another. The bass is clear to hear, which is quite a rare occurance on many post-hardcore records, the drums are quite flawless and fitting and the guitar is made best use of in songs like Mono and Palahnuiks Laughter, showing nothing but creativity every chance that they get.
The only flaws I feel that they made was that it had a feeling of being under-produced in a few songs, although this was later fixed in their debut album release a while later. Other than that it is hard to pick out flaws on here because they put their all into this and it really does show, although it seems to come almost natural to these guys.
So I recommend this to any fan of post-hardcore and I guess I recommend it to Busted fans too (I remember when Busted fans became Fightstar fans...). With that being said I do believe this gets too much stick just because it came from Charlie 'Busted' Simpson, but that's a tag I doubt he'll ever really lose and who can argue when he was all over TV a few years back singing about banging his school teachers?
Overall rating - 4.5/5
Best songs - Amethyst, Mono.
