THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY

Apparently a true-blue EP, this was released shortly following the Cloudkicker debut, The Discovery. One of the opening statements made 13 years ago on this release's first review by msphelps (Michael?!) certainly struck me: Ben Sharp's "music is intense and focused", yet "loses momentum", that his strengths shine better on an EP than an LP. I can only assume this is true. [I'm now not so certain haha.]

And speaking of intensity, the opener "Hold On" is huge and brutally fast. A warning in the midst of the storm. We get a pretty unique shift around minute 2, with a really cool, unusual drum beat and clean instrumentation, which feels like it's looking forward to what would be accomplished by Animals As Leaders. For the genre, this opener offers a lot. We get another recommendation in the next, "Tip Your Van Driver". I think the reason I was able to latch on to these drums, despite their actual normalcy in modern Metal, is simply because of how strongly they're mixed. Regardless, Sharp is a talented musician all-round. Rapidly descending into a creep, "Tip" drones eerily along until its raucous close. Unfortunately, not much else happened here.

We hurry along with the next, "Seriosity". I guess Cloudkicker subscribes to some early Djent-isms. I'm not sure why I hadn't thought this before. Sonically, this track reminds me of Sevendust (which here is a compliment). Just a bit more here for me than the last track, given its middle section.

Ok... I stopped paying attention... The title track is still playing?... It's boring, honestly. Finally, and I mean it, we have "Ever Thus to Deadbeats", which... probably means something to someone. This is a long track, at over 8 minutes, so I was feeling weary yet again haha. Some cool riffs and, again, the drums have some cool patterns. And it's not even 3 minutes in and I'm checking my watch... Before the 5 minute mark, it shifts into softness, quietness. No drums or bass, just reverberations of clean guitar. In the most Post-Rock crescendo ever, following minute 6, we approach heft. Anyways, good things here, but hard-nope subgenre pitfalls aplenty.

A slight adjustment for how I really feel... True Rate: 2.5/5.0