Said Mike - Stop The Clocks EP
 

Knowing I have seen this band live, I had a good idea on if I would like this EP or not. So you may think that the text below might be slightly biased.

I had only heard the songs live and never on CD and what I noticed were the good beats they had going. (Mainly from Sam on Synth who looks like a 12 year old, ironic?) But the vocals were a bit all over the place and couldn’t quite tell if he was singing or up against the microphone just for the sake of it.

Anyway, back to the actual CD. There was a reason why I quickly evaluated their live performance because the record is very similar in my response. The music has been put together well, the drums, guitars and how they have included the synth knowing full well that Sam joined the band after it was first put together. Throughout this EP, the chorus’ of each song turned out to be written better than the verses. They seemed bland and boring, yet still listenable compared to the chorus’. Even though (In my opinion) Tom can sing, he hasn’t got a good range of singing talent. Once you heard the vocals on one of the tracks, you have basically heard them on all 5 tracks.

I kind of wiped out at one point whilst listening to the EP as I thought one track had been put on there twice. I then realised it was two different songs (‘Mind Over Muscle’ and ‘Heads Down, Check It Out’) which sounded the same. One, it could have been the vocals not really altering on any of the tracks but also the rhythm sounded very similar too. Possibly two, the two songs are mainly synthed out and auto-tuned the most on the EP and with that, you cannot really do much when the song is mainly fitted around that.

Over all I think I will pick out the EP again and listen to it, but the band will have to put a lot more effort and hard work into their next EP or album. If they get to that stage as I don’t think they have the ability to fill out a 10 – 12 track album with the Powerpop, Rock, Punk genre they class themselves in.


Review by Claire