Eye Empire
Moment of Impact

3.5
great

Review

by Robert Garland STAFF
May 1st, 2011 | 21 replies

Release Date: 2010 | Tracklist

Review Summary: An album that’s inconsistent in places but needs repeated listens before being fully appreciated.

Rock is a genre that that few listeners see higher levels of greatness, and with Eye Empire’s ‘Moment of Impact’ listeners will be some-what satisfied but not overly impressed with the debut record. The records positive attributes are of a high standard as far as the hard rock genre goes and while the music is melodic at times, there is a respectable amount of ‘heavy’ throughout the album, just enough to keep budding metal-heads appeased, while in comparison does become soft enough to engage the listeners sense of diversity. ‘Moment of Impact’ displays a solid, if uneven record using some very interesting lyrical content and adding to its quality levels includes the guest appearances of Sevendust’s Morgan Rose and Lajon Witherspoon of track titled ‘The Victim’. The debut comes in at just over thirty-nine minutes and presents the listener with three to four top-notch tracks. But with most of the other tracks there are repetition of phrases and a certain lacking of creative talent shown over the course of the record really taking from the albums overall quality level.

Musically ‘Moment of Impact’ is both melodic and heavy and some riff lines show diversity, the lyrical content is engaging, and the actual vocal lines show enough talent to maintain the listeners’ attention. The drum work is excellent and tasteful to the recording process, there is no unnecessary fill work to take from the albums quality and the fills presented are not overly technical for the genre. The bass guitar is nothing special when added to mix but should not be discarded, hugging the main riff lines and recorded clearly gives a steady backbone to the album. Moment of Impact has some great potential, especially when considering the bands past experiences. Names like B.C. Kochmit from Switched and Corey Lowery from Dark New Day gives this band’s debut some standard even before listeners hit the play button on the CD player. However the album has its share of ‘filler’ tracks that do not have the same ‘punch’ as others, this can be found in the form of ‘Idiot’ or ‘Reason’. These tracks, while written in the same way as every other lacks the quality and interest levels for the listener, and at times becomes a dull listen with some highly repetitive riff patterns that really takes down the album’s effort.

Eye Empire’s debut may not appear to be the best thing out and is no way a terrible record. They have however produced a quality, however uneven debut record. After repeated listens this record may either grow, or lose some of its appeal to the listener. It displays a great example of quality but in the end is let down by its inconsistency. For the casual listener they may need to listen to this album on a whole, repeatedly to fully grasp the quality of the record. There is promise shown but the album lacks a higher level of consistency needed to push this to the top of the ‘hard rock mountain’.

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