Band: The Sleeping
Album Title: Believe What We Tell You
Release Date: 09.14.04
Released By: One Day Savior
Purchase: smartpunk
Offical Website: click here
Reviewed By: Daniel Alcinii
Track Listing:
- Tune In
- Sunday Matinee (Reel to Real)
- Believe What We Tell You
- Funus-Eris
- The Big Breakdown; Day 1
- The Big Breakdown; Day 2
- If Your Heart Was Broken, You Would Be Dead
- One Flight, One Flame
- Broadcast Silence
- Detonation: Paradise
- 15 On The Freeway
- Fleet
- Tune Out
Believe What We Tell You, the debut full length album from The Sleeping comes off of One Day Savior Recordings. The Long Island, New York based band blend together driving drum beats (Joe Zizzo) and intense bass lines (Sal Mignano), with vocals (Doug Robinson), in respect to certain songs, sounding like Tim McIlrath from Rise Against and guitars (Cameron Keym) that display a Coheed & Cambria “spacey” type sound. The Sleeping, produced by Michael Birnbaum and Chris Bittner (Coheed & Cambria/Straylight Run/Anadivine), have put together a solid 13 track album that is sure to amaze anyone looking for something new and exciting, but what else would you expect from a hard working band?
The Sleeping have done everything right on their debut, including a very unique booklet set out to look like a newspaper column.
The album kicks off with a 21 second introduction entitled “Tune In” which features radio frequencies until the opening track starts up. Sunday Matinee (Reel To Real) picks up in a fast paced style with scrappy-to-screamo type vocals, that fit the song very well. The first track is a pretty good taste as to what you’ll be getting throughout the rest of the album. Believe What We Tell You, the second track off of this album picks up fast to where the first track left off and flows really well. The track displays driving guitar riffs, and hard hitting drumbeats, you can’t help but notice yourself start singing along with the lyrics “Believe what we tell you/keep flipping pages/build up reactions.” This song is clearly a standout on the album. The next song, Funus-Eris has a more mellow approach to it, and is probably one of the softest songs you will hear on the album, with soft vocals and soft guitar work, the drums get to work and make this track what it is. Now it’s on to track 5, The Big Breakdown; Day 1. This is maybe one of the catchiest songs you will hear in a long time, with the vocalist singing “Broken down somewhere down in Georgia/with a thought of calling this innocent girl/ to let her know she is missed." It is here where the vocalist starts to sound like Tim McIlrath, but more defined, and the guitars start to sound a lot more complicated.
The song If Your Heart Was Broken, You Would Be Dead is maybe one of the most unique songs you’ll find on the album. It starts off with you listening to what seems to be a million conversations at once in a restaurant or party of some sort, hard hitting drums and a soft guitar rhythm come into focus. Around the one minute mark, you start to hear catchy female vocals singing “If your heart was broken/You’d be dead” as the voices start to fade out in the background. At this same point, the drums start to get faster and harder, as the guitar starts to get a little catchier and angry bass lines. Robinson soon after jumps in and starts to sing-a-long with the female vocalist in a growling type voice, which defines this song as a standout track. The song then comes to an end and you are left with yet another great song, One Flight, One Flame. The lyrics to this song paint a portrait of a war pilot as he shoots down enemy planes throughout the song, he then gets shot down and is killed in action. This is depicted in the lyrics, “One flight, one flame/Flights ablaze/lighting up the sky/So, leave me here all alone/As you pack your smiles and a dream” and “Bleed, dream, slip away/Everything’s gone/Crash through my eyes." The song then comes to an end with what seems to be the most technical and complicated guitars and it draws a slight resemblance to Rage Against The Machine. After this track, you hear three more tracks, which are also very catchy and make you want to dance and sing. Track 12, Fleet, this song has a very different feel to it as it brings you through a movie type setting as the band robs a bank. It takes you through when they are outside getting ready to run in with guns drawn, then to when they open up the vault, then to when everyone is ready to run out and the vocalist is shot and left to die by the other band members. The album then closes with the song Tune Out, it brings you out the same way the album brought you into it, with radio frequencies and a man with a distorted voice begins to talk. This track is 15 minutes long (probably 7 minutes of silence before anything interesting happens) then the band plays a little instrumental song. Once that finishes, the band starts joking around.
SIDENOTE: The Sleeping have shared the stage with the likes of Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy, Bayside, My Chemical Romance, From First To Last, The Goodwill, Prizefighter, Undying, FORDIRELIFESAKE, If Hope Dies, and Matchbook Romance.
Rating: 8/10
Cons: The one thing I did not like about the album is that during some of the faster paced songs the band pauses and starts playing again, they did this a little bit too much and it kind of stopped the flow of an otherwise stellar debut.
Standout Tracks:
Believe What We Tell You
One Flight, One Flame
If Your Heart Was Broken, You Would Be Dead
The Big Breakdown; Day 1
Broadcast Silence
Fleet
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