The Bunny The Bear

The Stomach For It

Written by: PP on 06/07/2012 04:29:18

It's puzzling how The Bunny The Bear can continue to exists as a band when it was clear from the very beginning that the entire premise of their seven-piece band was a gimmick based on one vocalist wearing a bunny mask, and another wearing a bear mask, thus concealing their true identities, a feat directly copied off Slipknot repertoire. It was difficult to take seriously then, and it is even more difficult to take seriously now that the novelty has surely worn off multiple times. Yet here we are with their new album "The Stomach For It", that at least by all accounts seems like an improvement over their atrocious Victory Records debut album, but still suffers from the same fundamental flaws that essentially make it an awful release.

The band make a big deal about the absence of autotune from their clean vocals (The Bear) based on my research, but what I'm hearing on tracks like "All Birds" and "Soul" I think it is extremely doubtful that autotune hasn't been used in as heavy amounts as the recyclable synth/eurodance/electronic effects that are still prominent in the mix. And yet the cleans cannot be classified as anything else but poor, where the screaming is definitely sub par to almost any decent band you can find in the post-hardcore/metalcore realms.

Previous criticism has pointed out that the band's entire sound (and concept) consists of trend-hugging garbage and catering to the lowest common denominators in music, and that is still largely true with "The Stomach For It". The melodies used feel shallow and extremely manufactured, often seeming like the band wrote some samples on a computer and simply copy/pasted the catchy parts together with complete disregard to the art of writing a song. The guitars are a little more prominent in the mix than before, but they mostly consist of your typical one chord breakdowns or other super-simple, chord based stuff.

But some credit must be given (against my will) where credit is due: at least the songs are occasionally mad catchy. "All Birds" and "Soul" in particular are highlight tracks that go a long way in explaining why The Bunny The Bear have over 300,000 plays at Last.fm alone; despite their stupid lyrics ("all birds sing something", ORLY?) it's hard not to sing along or at least hum along to the electronically induced melody. Still, it's but one redeeming quality in a sea of atrocities that can best be described as a messy, über trendy gimmicks that in the end are essentially completely recyclable garbage.

4

Download: All Birds, Soul, Breeze
For the fans of: That's Outrageous, Cobra Starship
Listen: Facebook

Release date 22.05.2012
Victory Records

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