Review Summary: This EP is mostly fan service.
Asking Alexandria is a band that you could love or hate depending on your music preference. For me I dislike the group mainly for it techno breakdowns, usually placed at the very end of the song. The reason is because most of these techno breakdowns seem out of place and they tend to break the progression of some of their songs. I'm not saying that they're bad but, at times they, aren't needed.
When I heard that the band was releasing a second album, I began to wonder what they were going to bring to the table on their second go around. I was mostly hoping they would change their sound a bit and maybe tone down, or rid themselves of, the techno breakdowns. It seems that that's what they're planning with this EP to tie fans over until their second release.
The EP start off with two covers of 80's metal band Skid Row, "Youth Gone Wild" and "18 And Life", two remixed tracks from their first release, a demo version of the song "I Was Once, Possibly, Maybe, Perhaps a Cowboy King", and a song called "Breathless" from their upcoming release.
The covers of "Youth Gone Wild" and "18 And Life" and stellar. Both pay homage to Skid Row in both sound and progression and vocalist Danny Worsnop comes very close to almost sounding like Sebastian Bach. The one thing that makes it even better is that the songs are not ruined by the techno breakdowns that band is know for and stay tightly-knit with the way the originals sound.
The next part of the EP are the remixes of "A Single Moment of Sincerity" and "Not the American Average". The remix for "A Single Moment" was somewhat repetitive with the same beat and repeated screams interwoven with each other. Frankly, it sounds like something that would be played at a club the Jersey Shore cast probably frequently visited. The second remix is for the song "Not the American Average" was something that I wasn't expecting. It has a very trance-like beat that sounds like it was created by Mr. Han from Linkin Park. I thought it was done well and it wasn't repetitive with a barrage of bass heavy beats or any annoying sounds that came off of a bad 8-bit video game.
The next track of the album is a demo version of "Cowboy king". The only major difference between the demo version and the album version is that the demo version is unpolished. usually when you listen to a demo of a song and compare it to the original you try to find differences between them. With this track it's just one difference and that is the sound quality.
The last track is the song "Breathless" from their up-and-coming album. The song is very catchy with its chorus and the vocals are deeper than previous efforts, especially the clean vocals, as the whine the singer had when singing is somewhat absent. The song has a breakdown, as it's a standard for almost all metalcore acts, so you will most definitely be familiar with it. One thing that separates this from past song is that it has no techno breakdown. This track is just a straight up metalcore song with chugging chords and machine gun double bass drums. Maybe the band is dropping it's techno sound for more metal brutality?
Overall, if you're an AA fan you should probably pick this up and hope that it keeps you busy until their sophomore release. If you're a fan of Skid Row, just download the covers from iTunes or Amazon.com.
