Artist:  Since October
Title:  This Is My Heart
Label:  Tooth & Nail

Something for metalheads and soft rockers alike …

At first blush, Since October is your average Linkin Park-esque, modern rock outfit with a knack for rap vocals and giving your parents a headache. The band’s album, This Is My Heart, boasts rhymes so loud and riffs so fierce they’d make P.O.D. proud. (Coincidentally, Since October’s release was produced by Travis Wyrick, who has produced much of P.O.D.’s work.)

“My Heart,” the record’s opening track, sets a tone of some of the hardest stuff you’ll ever hear from a group of 20-something small-town Christians with tattoos and/or dreadlocks. “Beautiful” and “Disaster” continue in that vein, with semi-repetitive but satisfying lyrical themes, like finding beauty in the imperfect and God’s unending grace. There are breaks in that enjoyable hard-rocking monotony, though, as in “In This Moment” and “Waiting.”

If you appreciate Linkin Park, P.O.D. and their contemporaries, then this is a band you ought to check out. But you’ll want to leave the softer tracks for listeners with more sensitive ears. Here, Since October is far from the rap-rocking norm. These songs are lush, melodic and downright pretty—a style even the most talented rap-tinged alt-rock bands have trouble conquering. But Since October has done so, and in this, listeners learn that the band is at its best when the members rest their vocal cords and calm down.



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