Revolution Smile - Above The Noise

I don’t mean to sound overly off-putting, but Revolution Smile is one of the most boring, plain rock bands I’ve ever heard. If you actually manage to make it through the first track you’ll be greeted with such witty lyrics as, “All along I was just faking it / And to do whatever just to be making it / All along I was just eating shit / And doing whatever just so I could make a hit.” It’s a good thing that when I received this album to review they didn’t include a booklet full of lyrics, because I’d probably would have typed out all the generically awful words just to make sure that anyone crazy enough to pick up this record would feel too nauseous to drive to the store. The production gets blown out and static-y every now and then for no apparent reason; was it the recording engineer's day off? There are so many bad things about this album that I can’t figure out what to write about next. Let me just sum up everything: Revolution Smile is a band that has no originality, a mindless producer, shoddy production, glittery-pop melodies in the middle of “rock” tunes, the most horrendous lyrics of all time, and was signed by the one and only Fred Durst. This would be album of the year, if only today was opposite day. Revolution Smile tries desperately to jump on the radio-pop-post-grunge (The Urge, Nickelback) bandwagon, but fails even at that. They use the worst drum machine ever on the track “Gun”, and abuse the hell out of the effect pedals like there’s no tomorrow on several other tracks, like “Payday,” “Cadillac Ass,” and “Looking Down the Barrel”. To make it all seem even worse than it already is, the band takes itself completely seriously, as if they are truly making a worthy contribution to the music world. I hate feeling embarrassed for other people, and I feel really embarrassed listening to this dreadful thing. I would dare you to try to sit through the entire thing without falling asleep, but I don’t want you to pick up the album and support this terrible band. [www.therevolutionsmile.com]