Release Date: August 9, 2011
How would you imagine an egg-salad and sauerkraut sandwich tasting? Can you picture the eggs and sour cabbage waging an unholy war on your taste buds and stomach? It sounds awful to think about. They’re just two things that while sometimes good on their own would never work slapped together haphazardly on a sandwich.
In the same vein, Eyes Set to Kill’s newest release, White Lotus, feels hastily put together, badly thought out, and leaves a horrible taste in the mouths of listeners.
The first half of the album is five songs and one short filler track that all try to maintain the illusion that this is a post-hardcore album by a post-hardcore group. However, it really brings nothing new to the genre that you haven’t heard before.
The songs all sound like b-sides Paramore or Evanescence put in a vault and decided not to release. There’s heavy double bass, fast guitar riffs, and growling male and high-pitched feminine contrasting vocals aplenty.
It’s the standard formula for the genre, and they follow it to a T. However, none of it is appealing because none of the tracks really standout from each other, much less from anything else in the genre. In fact, the album’s first track, “The Secrets Between,” and it’s fourth, “Harsh,” both seem to start with the same exact drum beat. Simply put, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been done already, and there’s nothing here that seems to be worth a second, or even a first, listen.
The second half of the album is where that bad taste in your mouth is cemented in and becomes nearly impossible to get rid of. The band seemingly decided to give up on this album having a cohesive sound and slapped four acoustic tracks onto its end. These last four tracks don’t fit at all with the sound of the rest of the album, and they just seem badly thought out from the start.
One of them is an acoustic version of the already hard to listen to “Harsh,” and another is entitled “Untitled” which contains amazingly uninspired lyrics about lost love such as, “I can’t see your face / Your writing’s on the walls / Your writing’s on the walls. Your letter is in the place / I wish that you would call / I wish that you would call.”
The other two acoustic tracks are covers of Nirvana’s “Polly” and Hole’s “Doll Parts” that both add nothing original to the songs and hold none of the pain or raw emotion that can be found in the originals. Good covers are acceptable additions to any album, but these horrible covers just add to an already overwhelming list of bad things found on this album.
There’s not a sound on this album that you couldn’t find done better already in the world of music. There are even a few sounds that you’d be better off never hearing, such as their atrocious cover of “Polly.” If you come across White Lotus or an egg-salad and sauerkraut sandwich in the wild, do yourself a favor and avoid both. Your senses will thank you.
Eyes Set to Kill White Lotus Tracklisting:
- “The Secrets Between”
- “Forget”
- “Stuck Underneath”
- “Harsh”
- “Where I Want to Be”
- “Erasing Everything”
- “Doll Parts”
- “Untitled”
- “Polly”
- “Harsh (Acoustic)”
