Review Summary: Here is a group designed to be generic, and they're good at it.
Bands do whatever they feel is necessary to bring in a crowd, if people come and see them at shows and buy their albums, it just brings them a step closer to being the next big thing. For groups like For All Those Sleeping out of Minnesota, they prize themselves in just being generic. The band never tries to do anything to spectacular, sticking to the basics and doing things they know some teenagers will love, including breakdowns, insanely catchy choruses and that multi-genre feel to their music. Every song featured on ‘Cross Your Fingers’ is an extremely generic crafted track from beginning to end, but that very aspect is the thing that makes this band so much fun to listen too.
It almost seems like For All Those Sleeping are taking a stab at their very own genre, and you can take that in a good or bad way. I say this because it never seems like the band doesn’t even try the slightest bit to separate themselves from the waves of uninspired groups that flood all the useless ‘core’ genres these days. Opening track ‘Outbreak of Heartache’ sets the mood for the entire album, and uses every single element of the bands music in it’s length of time. Once you’ve heard the first few tracks on the album, you’ve pretty much heard everything the band could possibly offer. Each song seems to follow similar patterns, containing average breakdowns backed with the catchy choruses, all coming together to create a fairly repetitive listen throughout.
Tracks like ‘I’m Not Dead Yet’ and ‘Janice, it Ain’t Funny’ do an extremely good job at being fun to listen too, and actually come out to be fairly good songs. As the album begins to move forward though, that level of repetitiveness hits hard, and the only thing keeping your attention are the little hooks some of the songs may contain. ‘Favorite Liar’ comes late in the album, and in my opinion is the best song the band has had to offer. Featuring a fun chant, a pretty awesome breakdown and an energetic listen, the song contains everything needed for a generic, yet extremely fun track to jam to every once and a while. A good majority of songs on the album do this band no justice, ‘He’s Dead Because Mommy Killed Him’ is an extremely forgettable track, right along side with ‘Run Away’.
Instrumentally, For All Those Sleeping fails to impress on most levels. A lot of the guitar work comes out boring and uninspired, while the drummer seems to know how to do nothing beyond average fills and overdone china breakdown patters. All of the breakdowns in the album feature extremely familiar patterns, all using an open-closed palm pattern with a slight rhythm change to try and make each of them different from one another. Lead vocalist Mike Champa is bland to say the least, his screams bounce between average highs and lows that do absolutely nothing to improve the groups overall sound. A lot of the times, I find myself questioning why the group should even have a stand up screamer, since he isn’t used that much throughout the album. Singer and guitar player London Snetsinger features an insanely high pitch, which fit’s the music at times, but comes out as just boring most of the time.
For All Those Sleeping is a band I can’t seem to hate, simply because I love how this band pulls off being so familiar. While many laugh at their lack of talent, I enjoy hearing what this band has to offer and while they won’t be moving any farther than where they currently are in their musical career, ‘Cross Your Fingers’ is an album that’s not only fun to listen too, but features a few hooks here and there that could catch your attention. So bad it’s good is the perfect way to explain this band in my opinion, and it’ll stay that way for as long as this band continues on this path.
