SAVE ENDS rolls a natural 20 on Strength Vs. Will!

(That’ll be the only exasperating bit of gamer hyperbole here. Promise.)

Independent of the World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons references, which nets you less than you’d think, Strength Vs. Will EP is an old school emo record. I mean Vagrant circa 2003 or PIEBALD tour partner. THE GET UP KIDS factors heavily into SAVE ENDS’ sound. A less hyperactive I Am The Movie, to speak of Justin from FAREWELL CONTINENTAL’s other band.

The male and female vocals don’t quite coil, but play off of each other rather nicely. Not corny maybe isn’t enough. It sounds fun. Like THE GET UP KIDS’ discography, none of the lyrics are going to surprise you. Well, maybe “Resurrection Hub”, which is perhaps where two people find love, as they wait for their characters to respawn next to each other (saw that happen on the Metro last week, was worth the 15 minute delay – Ed.).

An entire fourteen seconds separate the run times of the shortest song and the longest. The numbers are 2:48 and 3:02, but saying the songs are all about three minutes long sounds a bit too loose. But each of the five songs are all about three minutes, each with a hook slathered in the finest honey SAVE ENDS can gin up. A particularly fine example is on the final track “Dead And Gone,” when Christine Atturio stretches out “I made friends with Father Tiiiiiiiiiime.”

It almost goes without saying, but Strength Vs. Will is fucking catchy. Whatever my aims as a reviewer are, my cell phone and iTunes numbers tell another story: I’ve listened to this 15 minute EP at least 19 times since I got the press download. Put simply: SAVE ENDS takes me back to a specific time in my life, one when I was listening to a lot of GET UP KIDS and the first time my heart fluttered over an eight sided die. For you, the details may differ, but I’ll guess the flooding, overwhelming sentiment is the same.