Album Reviews

Besides Sheer Terror, there is another band making a comeback this week, albeit a band that is cut from a somewhat different cloth. Park is a Springfield, Illinois outfit that released a bunch of albums in the mid 2000’s on Lobster Records and were something of a darker alternative to emo bands like Armor For Sleep.

“Jacob The Rabbit” is the band’s first new output in 8 years and consists of three songs that serve as a prologue to a full album based on a story written by frontman Ladd Mitchell. Opening track “Lepus Fugam” sounds decidedly smooth for Park, a band who have always had a penchant for pretty complicated rhythms, expansive guitar lines and song structures that you could spend hours dissecting. If you had nothing better to do. It’s all still there but it just sounds catchier than ever before. The other two songs follow the same path and come with equally intricate riffs and drums that sound very busy (especially in “Tickling The Dragon’s Tail”). My only qualm with this release is the one that I’ve had with all of Park’s releases… I just don’t like the almost-but-not-quite whiny vocals that don’t hold any of the tension the music is drenched in.