Chuck Schuldiner Project

Friday, January 28, 2011

Do Not Engage

I just want to give anyone form the band reading this a heads up, I'm going to be a bit critical, but everything I say, I mean to be constructive, you guys aren't bad, you just need to work on a couple things. First, the good; Do Not Engage has a lot of variety between their songs, one song (ever after) has a softer sound to it, the next (take away) has some almost country influences that I really dig. "Movement" had a great solo and an almost party, celtic like sound to it, (probably using the wrong terms). "Finding the Words" has a really dark, deep sound to it, and is probably the most metal song on the whole album (we're a metal review sight after all). If they churned out more songs like this, I would definitely keep an eye on them because they could be a truly great band like this. The singer sounds most comfortable on this song. "Where'd you go?" has an urban, punk sound to it, with some really fuzzy guitar. Not a bad listen.

Unfortunately, Do Not Engage has a somewhat prominently cliched punk rock sound to it, think yellow card, with hints of "happy pop" on "Ever After" and "Where'd you go?". Of course, this really shines through with the vocals, the vocals simply are not good on four out of the five songs. They sound forced and somewhat nasally, almost like the singer is singing in his "head voice" which is, according to one of my friends, your higher voice. Typically speaking, you would lose control and accuracy with your voice when you use this set of vocal chords. I'm going to directly address the band, and say that whoever was singing the verses on "finding the words" / however he  was singing it is the way to go  for future recordings. The guitar occasionally displaying some chugging which sends off a hard core vibe, but it feels a bit cheesy. The guitar in the first 30 second or so of "where'd you go?" shows some serious potential tough, as well as "finding the words". The drums are fine, not exciting, but I can't complain about them.

Do Not Engage has all of the elements of a seriously good album, but they're fragmented, and will be better refined with more playing time. Definitely give them a listen  and keep following them, once they manage to refine their sound a little bit and work out the kinks with the vocals, they should really take off as an excellent band. Until Do Not Engage can pull everything together, 4/10.

http://www.myspace.com/donotengage

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