Review Summary: Not the best start, but you gotta start somewhere.
Senses Fail is a band quickly labeled screamo after releasing this debut EP,
From The Depths of Dreams. Buddy Neilson sings/screams, Garret Lablock and Dave Miller play guitar, Mike Glita is on bass and last, but good lord not least, Dan Trapp beating skins.
To be honest, Buddy Neilson can't sing yet on this recording. Each song his voice comes out nasal, weak, and outright annoying. He made up for this by honing his craft in later years, but this album vocally is as raw and challenging as it can get. Although rare moments of passable digestion take place.
The lyrics don't get any easier to swallow. Despite a large part of the following Senses Fail received early on is due to the popularity of Buddy Neilson's penmanship, the lyrics...um...the lyrics aren't good. Look, do you need examples? It's really not necessary you can just take my word for it...
...BUT it's so much better if I do show.
Sometimes they are appallingly violent as evident on
Free Fall Without A Parachute.
"I had a dream last night and in my dream I took a knife to you. I slit your throat from ear to ear, the wound was gasping for air, your scream so clear."
Here, same song, additional violence, going a bit overboard.
"I had a dream last night and in my dream I robbed a country club, a 5 year old tried to stop me, but I shot him in through the head and now he's dead."
Lovely! Right? Here's one from
The Ground Folds
"This song I wrote, it was for you. To live inside of me, I'm dying inside of you."
Awe, that was sweet, pretentious, but sweet! The only song with lyrics inspired from something other than ridiculousness and an author would be
Steven, which is a tribute to a dead friend.
"Losing in the fall, lost innocence came down. An 18-year old boy was buried in the ground. A families' broken hearts. A friends' streaming tears. The light lost in death, the livings growing fears. Of eternal darkness, or is it spiritual light? To come to terms with death on the darkest night."
Most songs start out with single picking from the guitar, which sounds exactly the same on a couple songs. It's an EP you guys, don't do that (
The Ground Folds and
One Eight Seven). Mostly it is all power chords along with the standard leads of the genre. As for the bass, well, simple is as simple does. Most of the time you can't hear it, but when you do it is boring. The drums stand out above everything else surprisingly. Nice fills and appropriate mixing causes them to rise above.
I really can't find anything on here to really redeem keeping this album in a collection unless you are a diehard Senses Fail fan. If you love them, you should at least listen to this once. The inclusion of an acoustic version of
The Ground Folds is nice, but doesn't do much to contribute. At 32 minutes this is too generic with not enough catchy moments, but immediately after this album the quality of the bands music increased dramatically. This is before Buddy Neilson had honed his craft, later on Senses Fail would go on under his leadership to cover multiple genres and go on nation wide tours. This amateur recording is the baby of a band with far more potential than is found here. Drink some milk.
