GAMEFACE “Always On”
Arrrg…I hate when this happens. GAMEFACE has been a pretty amazing band since their inception, claiming one of the few “elite” spots in pop-punk song writing skills and melody construction. Their previous album, “Every Last Time,” was pretty much in the realm of amazing, considering the fact that it took the band three years to release it. In a little more than a year, “Always On” doles out another 10 tracks in typical GAMEFACE fashion minus one crucial element — Urgency. Now this is not to say that “Always On,” is a sleeper, because it is still a very good album, but the guitars on the majority of the tracks fail to recreate the sway so indicative of a killer GAMEFACE song. Also, as opposed to “Every Last Time,” where the album bordered on being overproduced, “Always On,” sounds like on more than a few occaisions a rabid monkey was thrown into the studio control room and was allowed to lower the guitars to a barely forceful measure. The production is crisp, but a tad anemic. Vocalist, Jeff Caudill, did all the artwork on the cd, as he also does most of the work on any Revelation release, and it is pretty cool. Not quite haunting, but dark and mildly depressing. Back to the music: I found the first track, “Laughable,” to be rather catchy, and the fifth track, “Anyone can write a song,” to be somewhat ingenious. The final track, “Awkward Age,” hits pretty hard, which was a nice to finish off the album. Jeff’s voice is clearly one of the best assets of the band. No one should dispute GAMEFACE’s song writing talents — they have those for sure, they just need to kick the energy up a notch.
Revelation
