Socialburn'Where Are You'

Elektra/Asylum

Grade: C +


Warning flags should immediately fire throughout the dark recesses of the brain when the press release for a band's new album spends an entire paragraph lauding the producer of the album because he worked with such horrid bands as Creed and Puddle of Mudd. Fortunately, Socialburn, on their debut album "Where Are You," manages to escape being ravaged at the hands of producer John Kurzweg. Unfortunetly, Socialburn also fails to offer anything original in their debut.

Headed by singer/songwriter Neil Alday, Socialburn was formed in a small town in Florida. The band's four members met while sucker fishing (catching fish with their hands). You would think that growing up in a town that has never been a willing partner with producing prodigy and where days are spent fishing without poles would birth vengeful music about the hopelessness of small-town America. However, the only track on "Where Are You" that hints at this regional bleakness is the opening track "Break Back," after which the album proceeds to dwell on the familiar territory of love and heartbreak.

Socialburn cites influences like Ween and Slipnot, none of which seem to have any impact at all on their music. Instead, Socialburn sounds like a smattering of recent radio-friendly acts, such as Lifehouse and Diffuser.

Socialburn certainly does not lack the ingredients of a challenging and stimulating band. Alday has a voice that is both scratchy and sonorous. The band certainly does not lack good musicianship, either; all the tracks move along swiftly and smoothly, even with distortion and rapid chord changes.

Since the group has all the elements in place to be a progressive band, one must wonder how much influence producer Kurzweg yielded in molding Socialburn into a copy of its peers. The sad answer is that Kurzweg probably did much to create the conventional sound of Socialburn -- he even plays background on a few tracks.

"Where Are You" opens with two rousing tracks that could easily have been torn off a Bush album. The tracks both feature enough distortion and layering of guitars to be invocative of Bush's earlier albums. In "Break Back," Aldy scorchingly questions his fate in an uncaring world: "The way I needed more than you for me to succeed / In this world of hate that only lives for one thing / For us to suffer, for us to suffer."

On "One More Day," Socialburn slows down their pace enough to provide a refreshing shot of originality on the album. In the chorus of the song, Aldy lets go of his usually rough voice and adopts a higher-pitched sound that matches the song well and compliments the overall sad tone of the album.

The warbling guitar solo on "Pretend" verges on the experimentalism that Socialburn so badly needs. At the very end of the song someone can be overheard saying, "The base drum is busted." It might not mean much, but this spontaneity is exactly what Socialburn needs more of.

"Where Are You" sounds a bit outmoded because similar things have been done before, yet it still remains an enjoyable rock album. Socialburn has a strong enough base of lyrics and good musicianship that if they can shed some pressure from their record label and find their own sound, they have the makings of a solid band.