Search - Flatliners :: The Great Awake

Skipping the sellout process and going right to the garbage

Nick Colosi | Chesterland, OH, USA | 04/18/2008

(2 out of 5 stars)

"So I stumbled upon the Flatliners on the internet and gave them a listen, they were pretty good, so when I heard they were coming to Cleveland and the show was like... 8 bucks, I decided to go and they impressed me to the point where I bought both their CDs.



Destroy to Create was an awesome piece of work and it will go down in my CD collection as a classic for the rest of forever. Now, with their bigger indie label debut on Fat Wreck Cords, we already see what happens to almost all ska bands. They let their ska roots slowly fade away into a generic mediocre pop-punk CD.



With the Flatliners, they skipped this step and just cut out all the ska and put out possibly the most bland record I've ever seen from a band that used to be incredible. Ultimately there are like... maybe 2 or 3 songs where the ska influence is apparent and the rest is cheap rock tunes that can be found anywhere. The guitar lines, which were very defined on Destroy to Create, are not all that well, and the only riff that really stands out is "You Guys Want One of These" while as their previous CD it was probably every other song had a blistering guitar piece. The bass is boring and usually you can't hear it, which really sucks because I've seen their bassist play and he's really talented, but here he is underutilized.



If I had never heard their first CD, this would be an okay record and I might still have bought it if the anticipation wasn't there. "... And the World Files For Chapter 11" is cool, if only for the intro, and "This Respirator" is a cool soft song, which there weren't a lot of on the debut. Other than that, sadly, there's not much here. Every song sounds almost exactly the same and is very forgettable.



So basically, if you want something safe and boring, get this CD, but if you want real good ska-punk that knows no boundries and treads new grounds, stick with "Destroy to Create""