Review Summary: Passion is the only thing that's driving me
It’s easy to write Being as an Ocean off as a has-been that had one good album and got progressively worse as time went on. After all,
Dear G-D… is considered their consensus best album, and based on the general reception, it seems like their transition from spoken-word based post-hardcore ala Hotel Books into sort of an
Amo-lite on
PROXY: An A.N.I.M.O. Story did not endear them to either a new fanbase, or please fans of their early work. Stylistic shifts tend to be a double edged sword, and clearly Being as an Ocean gets that. So, back to the drawing board, and they’re back five years later with
Death Can Wait, and from what it looks like, it’s a revert back to their early sound, but not completely.
Joel Quartuccio’s spoken-word passages are back in full force, as emotionally invigorating as they were before. The electronic moments here, obviously retained from the aforementioned
PROXY, are used to accentuate the sound rather than be closer to the whole pie. Let’s be clear here; the trademark melodrama the band is known for has not gone away, so if that isn’t what you’re looking for, then I suggest running away faster than Tyreek Hill runs a 40 yard dash into the endzone. Songs like “Gave It a Voice So That My Heart Could Speak” and “Gloom” show Being as an Ocean at their emotional peak, sounding truly gut-wrenching in spots. It’s as if their everyday existence is another apocalypse waiting to happen, and for many of us, that is a cathartic release.
If there’s any major negative, it’s that the overreliance on catchy clean hooks kneecaps the emotional resonance that this album could have. Had it went all-in on the massive doom-and-gloom of something like The Elijah’s
I Loved I Hated I Destroyed I Created there’s a chance it could’ve been far more special. But for what they are, the hooks are not bad by any means. After their last album, it’s hard to say that
Death Can Wait is anything less than a resounding success. If they can build off this framework, they may finally be able to surpass their debut album. There’s room for improvement, but this is their best foot forward in years.
