Captives

My Eyes Are Open EP

Written by: TL on 24/11/2012 16:18:43

One thing I love is when I discover a good new band and decide to review it, and then find that it's available as a promo in our internal Rockfreaks.net forum. It happens seldomly enough though. In fact the only time I can currently remember it happening is when I recently became aware of Captives and their fresh new debut EP "My Eyes Are Open". The band is a trio from Eagle Mountain, Utah and on their EP they take a mellow, introverted bitterness known from later Brand New records and fold it out into louder, grungy, in your face rock moments complete with crunchy guitar and yelled singing that sounds like sandpaper scraped over the vocal cords.

The EP consists of four songs, the three former of which are the loudest and most representative of what Captives are seemingly about at this stage. Contrary to Brand New however, Captives do not go for as obvious or as progressive quiet loud dynamics, opting rather to let their songs develop into elongated sessions of continuing rocking, much like Make Do And Mend have done on their first two albums. In fact, if you imagine a perfect mid-point between Brand New, Make Do And Mend and Sainthood Reps, I'd say that should give you a pretty accurate picture of what Captives sound like.

The average quality of the EP is great, with the production sounding just right for this type of release and with each song having good parts to offer. "Forsaken" and "Ugly" have given me something to shout along to in particular, but "Abandon" really can't be said to be any worse, so it's just a matter of timing and subjectivity which you'll like most I reckon. As for the final song "Grace", it is a slow-burning track which crawls ahead with a much more resignated and downbeat attitude just begging to be unleashed in a thundering climax towards the end - a climax which, unfortunately, does not really arrive in the all out sense the song initially makes me hope for. "Grace" is still a really good song though, as are the songs generally here on "My Eyes Are Open", which is a highly promising release from a previously unknown band - a band you should probably start looking out for starting right now.

8

Download: Forsaken, Ugly, Grace,
For The Fans Of: Brand New, Make Do And Mend, Sainthood Reps, Seahaven
Listen: facebook.com/Weareallcaptives

Release Date 13.11.2012
Reveille Records

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