Band: Deathbed Reunion
Release: Obviously Late (EP)
Release Date: Out Now
Deathbed Reunion are all about crossover potential, and they’ve got bags of it. There’s solid punk sing-alongs fused with modern British metal thats seriously popular at the moment. Its not a surprise then to hear this Norwegian outfit recorded ‘Obviously Late’ at Outhouse Studios in Reading where bands like Enter Shikari and Architects have previously worked.
Opener ‘Half Past Years’ sounds somewhere in between Rancid and While She Sleeps which is great and should open the band’s audience up to a larger number but then again runs the risk of alienating either of those particular crowds. You can definitely hear the British influence on this EP as some of the clean choruses are even reminiscent of Lower Than Atlantis with frontman Kjartan Vagle’s southern English twang on some of the vocals.
The climactic stages of ‘Declined’ bring forth the gang-vocal sing-alongs which work effectively but its nothing we haven’t heard done by tons of bands this year. It’s pretty difficult to work out what sort of band Deathbed Reunion want to be or even are because there’s so many mash ups of sounds, some of the clean vocals could even feature on an indie record but then there’s the punk and metal squeezed in too.
That’s the only issue with this EP, you’re never quite sure what it is you’re listening to but it’s hard to work out if this is a bad thing. It gets you thinking, why can’t a band just do what they do without worrying about genre? The type of music they play doesn’t always have to be set in stone, but what is certain is that ‘Obviously Late’ is an entertaining EP with plenty of talking points and songs to just mosh out to.
When they release a full length, it’ll be interesting to see where this band goes in terms of overall sound and if they can maintain the dynamics on ten songs per se. However this EP does them a lot of favours as there’s definitely an audience for this sort of music, it’s just a case of them tapping into that.
7/10
Reviewer: Greg Spencer
