The Distance - The Rise, The Fall & Everything in Between

[Abacus Records]

The Distance used to be your normal Bridge 9 styled hardcore band with some weird Locust-by-way-of Daughters sound effects parts thrown in here and there. They've now added a lot of emo-pop-punk bullshit hooks to their normal formula making a huge mess of an album. Like a 'Retarded kids in fingerpainting class' size mess.

This CD should really be an advertisement for Pro Tools. There's so many unneeded filters and plug-ins used here that I don't doubt they made some just for this record. I'm also hoping the first thing thanked in their liner notes is AutoTune.

The shitty part is, they seem more than comfortable playing fast semi-melodic hardcore. All the pop hooks are really boring or not very well written. I understand the need to make money with this hardcore shit, but at least wait until you're totally awesome at it before jumping into it. They're about a year too late for this emo-pop bandwagon anyway and would be better off going back to the lab and figuring out what the next big thing is going to be so they can get a headstart next time.

The Distance on Myspace