Review Summary: Trophy Eyes’ debut is an emotional charged 15-minute sprint of pop-punk/melodic hardcore.
Ah, Trophy Eyes. What an evolution you have made since 2014. If you compare the recent pop-inspired album The American Dream to their earlier hardcore work, you would have a hard time telling that it was the same band. This isn’t to say that any style is worse than another (it comes down to preference, after all), but I prefer the earlier Trophy Eyes sound. Sadly, The American Dream is mostly likely the nail in the coffin for that style. So, as an obituary for a band that won’t exist in the same way ever again, I decided to revisit their first EP, Everything Goes Away.
Right out of the gate, this EP takes off. Nowhere in the 15 minutes do you have a chance to take a break with a softer sound or a slower tempo. This plays into the strength of an EP playtime. If this was tried on a studio album, it could become exhausting and make the album suffer from “all-songs-sound-the-same” syndrome (which is a main complaint I have for their first studio album). While these tracks might sound similar the first listen through due to the relentless pacing, the 5 focused tracks really allowed production to be tweaked on each to make sure they’re aggressive and catchy.
The style that Trophy Eyes goes for is great. “Pop-punk with one hell of a bite” is a good way to describe it, but it’s not in a breakdown fest a la A Day to Remember style. Or maybe “Hella catchy melodic hardcore” is a better way. Seriously, I still get the chorus of Hourglass stuck in my head at least once a week. The guitar, bass, and drum work are great with no complaints, and the mixing/production sounds great (especially for a first EP).
A great strength of this EP is the voice of lead singer John Floreani. His raspy vocal performance might throw off some first-time listeners, but he more than makes up for it with his sincere performance and his lyrical content, and it helps add to the intensity of the tracks. From the anger that comes from "Bandaid" due to to the more optimistic track "Fortunate", there’s not a single moment when I doubted Floreani's passionate performance. An especially potent moment that sent shivers down my spine is during the fourth track "Hourglass", where he screams "All those late-night medical shows, the irony if I'd had listened, I would have known" in reference to the passing of both of his grandparents within 24 hours of each other. These lyrics that bring us into John’s troubled past, like him dealing with a friend’s meth addiction in “May 24”, are the true highlights.
However, with how amazing the lyrics are, it doesn’t mean much if you can’t understand them. For most of this EP, I had to pull up lyrics up online to be able to dive into their meaning and understand Floreani’s rasp. This might not be an issue for people more accustomed to screamed lyrics, but as someone who doesn’t listen to too much screamed vocals for lyrics, it was a struggle to understand everything. I did understand more as I listened to the album more, though.
I don’t think there’s much that could have been done to improve this EP. It doesn’t overstay it’s welcome for its intensity at only 15 minutes, and it’s very catchy and passionately aggressive with the pop-punk/melodic hardcore blend. Floreani’s vocal performance could be a bit more comprehensible at times, especially with how good the lyrics are, but lyrics for songs are online. If you’re a fan of melodic hardcore or pop-punk (or especially both), I highly recommend this EP to you. I’m melancholy about the fact I won’t get another album in this style from this band, but as the Trophy Eyes reminds me with this EP, Everything Goes Away at some point.
