Review Summary: Electronicore at its ever so slightly growing worst.
The Bunny The Bear is an “Electronicore” band hailing from New York that has been carefully following in the footsteps of genre ringleaders Attack Attack, I See Stars, and Enter Shikari since their inception. The band uses all the old formulas; poppy singing, big synths and dubstep breaks, and simple breakdowns exchanged for riffs, but ever so slightly stand out with the use of two distinct vocalists. One wears a bunny mask and contributes all the screaming vocal bits, while the other wears a bear mask and sings in a decidedly clean and unbearlike fashion. Even for listeners that might like the subgenre, The Bunny The Bear is pretty much seen as the bottom of the synth laden barrel after tossing out five albums in as many years, and only marginally improving with each hurried release. After being absolutely disgusted with the songs I’ve encountered over the years, I can say with complete honesty that this is their best and most mature release. However that is still saying extremely little.
First and title track, “Food Chain”, is a decidedly poor start for the album. Synth and breakdowns are the name of the game and the band’s biggest glaring weakness reveals itself front and center. The Bunny. The Bunny’s screams are grating and amateurish to the point that already amateurish vocalists sound like honed professionals in comparison. “Almost” growls and screams that sound like a cat with its tail stamped on make for an extremely unpleasant listening experience. The song is merely a short intro to the album, a tired cliché I might add that turns out to be a good thing because of how painful the track is. Second track, “The Seeds We Sow”, showcases the full band and turns out to be one of the highlights. The Bear’s voice is a bit of a hit and miss affair. He has a very large but high pitched range that can be quite good at times. Alternately he takes on what sounds like an intentional slur that results in a chipmunk like voice that is as annoying as it sounds. The Bear is the saving grace of this track as he is on the handful of other highlights. An actual guitar lead slips in during the chorus, an addition seemingly forgotten for the rest of the album. The song is quite pleasant until the band commits a massive misstep with an ill-timed and completely unfitting breakdown in the middle of the song. Several forgettable tracks fill in the early to middle portion of the record including one with an extremely grating dubstep beat. “First Met You” is terrible barring the decent chorus but leads into by far the best song of the record, “Skyscrapers”. Ironically this song is permeated by a female guest vocalist that takes over most of the vocal performance and crafts an utterly addicting hook. The rest of the album pretty much slips off into forgettable and boring, ending with an unnecessarily long closer at near 7 minutes.
The instrumental portion of the band can be described as “unimaginative” in kinder terms, or “lazy” in less kind ways. The synths are relatively passable but can be irritating. The guitars do almost nothing besides one or two leads mixed with chugging and power chords, the bass is literally nonexistent, and the drums keep the beat incredibly unremarkably. The production is run of the mill for the genre, clean but at least the guitars don’t sound as horrid as they used to on fan favorite, “Aisle”.
Overall this is the best the band has offered to date but even still, it’s barely passable. The highlights of the album can’t reach higher than a 3 or 3.5 and mixed with 8 songs rated 2 or lower it makes for a near painful listen. Unless you are a diehard fan of the band, my recommendation would be to walk right on by nonchalantly.
