Review Summary: If you thought it couldn't get worse, you were wrong
The Bunny The Bear exploded onto the scene as one of Victory Records' more niche signings, with their major record debut album 'If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say...'. Strangely, there were some nice things to say about that release. It may have been an incredibly average experience, but songs like 'C'est Pas Si Loin' are still in my dirty bowl of guilty pleasures. Now, The Bunny The Bear follow up with sophomore album 'The Stomach For It'. And it just got worse.
For those of you unfamiliar with the sound of The Bunny The Bear, they are the latest cross-breed of post-hardcore with electronics, in their case overpowering any other instrumentation with electronic noises. They combine their experimental sound with a theatrical twist, being the vocalists wearing bunny and bear masks. Yes, really.
The problem with 'The Stomach For It' is that it takes everything that made 'If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say' even slightly bearable and rids the messy, synth-driven music of it. Guitars are mostly buried beneath the electronic soil, and even when they get a chance to stand out, they completely blow it. Without a doubt, the synths are the key components to The Bunny The Bear's music, but in 'The Stomach For It', it just seems to drown everything else out of relevance.
Additionally overpowering everything that's not electronic is the vocals. And the vocals truly are mixed to say the least. "The Bear", the one who does the clean vocals, can hit amazing pitches and has a pretty powerful voice, although at times he is perhaps straining his voice too much as you can hear a noticeable shake in his singing. Then along comes "The Bunny". Where did it all go wrong? 'If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say' displayed screams ranging from good to bad, but the particular attraction was how well he hit the low death growls. Unfortunately, for the follow-up, The Bunny The Bear have opted to tone down any noteworthy screams in favour of mere yelling. Sure, it goes easy on the ol' vocal chords, but as far as the music goes, it is anything but easy on the ears. Just listen to the song 'Lonely'; the screams/yells turn that into an unbearable song.
It really is a shame, considering how much potential this had. They could have followed up with an album tweaking and improving their style. Listening the the aforementioned track 'Lonely', and you can clearly see a lot of promise. From the piano intro to the annoyingly catchy chorus, it really could have become something noteworthy. And then the Bunny starts screaming. And it turns back to mediocrity.
As a sophomore effort, 'The Stomach For It' takes any slight signs of potential found in their debut and sweeps them away. The synths are rather basic, the vocals are cringe-worthy, the guitars are practically non-existent and the music itself at times sounds rather sloppy. It's annoying that this will get eaten up by the fans of the popular synth-hardcore fusion, since The Bunny The Bear really have mistakes they need to learn from. If 'If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say' gave you any slight sense of hope, 'The Stomach For It' destroys it.
