LVL. 1

This band reminds me a lot of Between the Buried and Me in many ways, the big one with this being how similarly I feel about both bands' debuts. I find this to be extremely amateurish and extremely aggressive to the point where everything just ends up feeling somewhat like noise, but is also extremely all over the place with transitions, with even the length of the songs not taking away from how much some of these songs contain, even if most of it could easily be left out. There isn't too much variety between song, other than a few interludes that calm down for a bit. Despite a lot of this being pretty mediocre, there are some moments where there are some really groovy riffs, which definitely makes the overall listening experience somewhat better, along with a couple of decent solos, such as in 'Me and Tom Brokaw Are Like "This"'. I also find the raw nature of the album to be entertaining in its own right, with the cleaner vocal section in "She's My Bloody Pie' being a big example, not being particularly good, but still being fun. Unfortunately, other than isolated moments throughout the album, this never goes beyond listenable, never really being offensively bad, along with being quite short, but never really reaching any major heights, even in its best moments. For those who enjoyed BTBAM's first couple of albums, enjoy extremely fast paced, heavy music, or wanted to think of what 'Sikth' may have sounded if they decided to try going full metalcore (albeit with less compositional prowess), you'd probably get a kick out of this, but to me, there's definitely a lot of room for improvement, which fortunately was addressed on their future albums.

Best Songs: Those Were Real Witch Bones, Maddens for Noobz

Weakest Songs: Get Awesome, It's Professional When That Happens, Joe Dirt, She's My Bloody Pie

Verdict: A really messy album filled with similar flaws to BTBAM's debut, being sometimes unnecessarily heavy and fast, with the songs ending up blending together to some extent, leading to a fairly dull sounding album. It isn't terrible, but it isn't really very good either, and I'd only recommend this to someone into this kind of music, as I personally don't see how it could appeal to anyone else in a major way.

This gets squarely placed into the category of "so ugly" and "so out there" that a great many "progressive rock" fans are just not going to be game for it. As an appreciator of Mathcore, of this brand of hyper-aggressive Prog Metal (in a world post-DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN) and, more recently, a fan of the most necessary ugliness of the ugliest of Death Metal vocalists and other "growl artists" (see Chuck SCHULDINER of DEATH, also... lol), I'm personally so game for this.

I would say, most likely coming from a generally "post-hardcore" place, we are presented with a very tongue-in-cheek approach to vocals. Not to mention some absolutely ridiculous lyrics: "that lightbulb burned out when I left that b*tch for dead"; "your face is looking thin, maybe that's your HIV, but baby, you never looked so fresh to me"; "if apathy has never been so en vogue, then I am cocaine in 1986, and I'm the silicone in your fake t*ts"; and so on... To reiterate, the vocal delivery is also absurd at many times throughout. I think it's fun, but I'm sure for your average fan of, again to put it in quotes, "Progressive Rock", I'll assume it's more niche and more novelty than it is worthwhile. And thusly, to be as honest as possible, I wanted to make sure I was giving this particular album a proper rating, with the scope and focus of the site in mind.

The musicianship of the band is quite good and I really look forward to digging into more. If you are a fan of Technical Death Metal, the guitarwork alone should do it for you. If you can look past the obvious absurdities already mentioned above, and I'm sure if that descriptor of "fan" fits the bill for you, I would think it will.

Last Chance to Reason's second vocalist, Bob Delaney, was only in the band for about a year from what I can tell; enough time to record this album and tour for it and then get out of dodge. Before I had gotten into them, the thing that was the selling point was his replacement, Michael Lessard, most notably now known (also) as the current lead vocalist of modern Progressive Metal torchbearers THE CONTORTIONIST. And there are certainly some ethereal elements that I heard here that could be compared to those used by the latter. Worth checking out for fans of DILLINGER, BEHOLD... THE ARCTOPUS, early BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, and... others? I guess I'm not really so well versed with this side of Prog Metal.

True Rate: 2.75/5.00