The London-based five piece’s second EP and first to be distributed through Century Media certainly shows promise and shows that there may be more to come from the band in the future, but in fact the EP only helps demonstrate that the band are not completely ready for the big time just yet. If being thrust into the mainstream is to be compared to going out for a night on the town, lets say, a fellow rising British band such as Marmozets would be in the taxi on the way to club, whereas Zoax would still be at home trying to get their shoes on by comparison.
Is Everybody Listening? (Century Media) does have its positive moments though, the album is a frenetic and frantic beast throwing the listener all over the place in that diet Dillinger way that a band like Architects has pretty much perfected. Make no mistake though this is certainly a lot less heavier than Architects, there’s more a frenetic almost indie tone to it, which shares a lot in common with Marmozets.
When listening to this, the album that kept coming to mind was the recent début album from Beartooth. It’s not as heavy or as in your face as that, though it certainly has one toe in the great sea of indie rock, though with a great connection between bottled insanity and sweet yet weighty choruses.
Overall, Is Everybody Listening? is certainly not going to set the world on fire and is far from the finished product, but has enough about it that I would be shocked if this ends up the best release put out by this band by the end of their career.
More of a brief wind than the hurricane some had forecast it to be.
6.0/10
DAN O’BRIEN
