Released: January 8, 2013
Notes from the Underground begins loudly with the opening track "Dead Bite." Its circus-like singing and sloppy rapping make for a bad combination. Yet, the song's poorly written lyrics almost make up for the fact by turning it into a novelty song of redeemable catchy quality. The song could have been infectious if it weren't for the loud overbearing beats and instruments in the background.
The next track "From the Ground" works much better with its loud instruments by adding loud singing, which isn't half bad. The lyrics are marginally better than the first song. The whole song has merit. It's nothing particularly special, but it does keep the "catchy" factor from the first song, which one could suspect that that was what they were looking to achieve.
"Another Way Out" opens with silly synth pulsing. However, despite this one line of instrumentation, which is echoed in the chorus, the whole song is surprisingly well-made. The instruments all mesh together coherently, yet still sound hectic, which can only be assumed to be incidental.
The next track "Lion" is extremely poorly written lyrically. The song is not sung well. The rapping is sub-par, and its placement in the song is obnoxious at best. The whole song is extremely forgettable. The backing instruments just become boring noise after a while.
The song "We Are" is the first and currently only single off of the album. This baffles me personally. Not because of the quality of the song, but because the song follows the same formula of "Young" off of Swan Songs, a popular song by them previously released as a single. The song is good. This is the first song off of the album thus far where the rapping isn't annoying and can stand on its own. The problem lies within the instruments, which have the same problem as the previous song, where they just become a confused mess of noises. I don't think HU knew what they were trying to achieve with this song, but it didn't end up bad.
The sixth song "Pigskin" is god-awful. I suppose their terrible "Myspace" habits die hard. They cannot become a serious band if they make songs like "Pigskin." The song has no redeeming qualities, and it almost makes me sick. Even its placement in the album is wrong. Why is it there? There were no songs like it so far!
The following track, "Rain," has potential to be a very good song, but, again, the instruments try to do much and end up hurting the total product. I enjoy the acoustic vs electric thing they're trying to do, but it isn't being done properly here. There's a large amount of rapping on the track, which isn't bothersome, and actually add to the track. The song is very memorable in the grand scheme of the album.
"Kill Everyone" is another surprisingly abrupt change in style. This track sounds like a very dumbed-down early-Linkin Park track. It's pre-chorus is extremely annoying. However, although the lyrics are poorly written in particular here (not to mention extremely irrelevant and confusing), the song still manages to sound pretty good overall. Except for that pre-chorus, there's nothing about the song that "sounds bad." The instruments all work together here and the singing isn't bad either.
The ninth song "Believe" makes a confusing choice of instrumentation. The song fails to give off the inspirational tone that it wants to. This song is a real mess, where the rapping is actually the high point of the track. All of the instruments collide with each other and show that sometimes there can be enough instruments in a song.
"Up In Smoke" is silly, and that's it. It's neither particularly bad nor good. The instruments mix together pretty well here, but just because they're mixed well doesn't mean it's good to begin with. The lyrics are ridiculous and I think (hope) they know it.
The last track on the album is "Outside." This song is structured very well, with an endearing opening verse. Then the loud part hits you with slow smacks (in a good way!) The rapping mixes well with this song in particular. I hoped that the song would be the one that doesn't have any problems, but the chorus ended up being sung extremely obnoxiously in a whiny voice with lyrics that I didn't even realize were whiny until they were sung in this fashion.
All in all, the album could have been much better. Most of the songs followed the same general patterns with the same general flaws. But it does definitely show some maturity.
RATING - 3.5/10
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