Easton Legacy - "New Nightmares to Challenge Sleep" Album Review
Easton Legacy’s latest EP, New Nightmares to Challenge Sleep, is one of the most ambitious releases I’ve heard coming from a band that is just starting out. They don’t just want to play the fundamental something that is comparable to doing figure 8’s or double axel jumps for skaters. Easton Legacy want to do the quadruple jumps and death-spirals which guys like The Receiving End of Sirens and 30 Seconds to Mars do, and Easton Legacy are quite good at doing the really hard stuff. Their EP was recorded Apple Head Studio in Woodstock, New York and produced by Michael Birnbaum and Chris Bitner (Coheed and Cambria, John Mayer, Straylight Run, The Sleeping), so their coaches have mentored several triumphant artists in the past. New Nightmares to Challenge Sleep acts as a momentum builder to get the pendulum swinging, and it definitely gives the band momentum.
The lead vocals of Jesse have a street savvy pitch that makes his style of singing accessible to audiences to reach. His guitar playing along with Charles on lead guitar builds the songs into grandiose rock scores that show excellent handling of riffs as large as tsunamis. The rhythmic grooves are steep made by Joe on bass/backup vocals and Ryan on drums, filled in by lush synth padding from Brian on keyboards. The band works with a pop punk framework and adds patches of hardcore guitars and new wave-esque synths. The tracks are big league productions with quite a bit of substance like the occasional pick slides through “Monster Eats the Pilot” and the classic piano grafting giving “Back Off Man I’m a Scientist” leverage on its exodus. The music shows ambitious spins and cycling with a jazzy punk rock propulsion on the two aforementioned tracks that is reminiscent of The Last Goodnight.
The vibrating chords of “Run for It Marty” generate a series of electrical charges, and the steely intensity of the chord rotations along “If You’re Not Mad Enough to Bare” produce trellises of synergy. The band delves into spectre-like lexicons in the guitar phrases and mallet sized drumbeats on “Goodnight Neverland,” and synth pop textures undercoating the prog rock transmissions of “Traitors of the Lost Ark” which fatten the melody’s density. To add to the complexity of their music, Easton Legacy also write complex lyrics that are cleverly versed like in “Monster Eats the Pilot” as Jesse relays, “Bury me at sea before I unceremoniously drown between the sheets / The frigid oceans waters that surround me have coded my torrid temperament / This tomb is free of regret / We are broken… / Here alone, I‘m waiting for the last time you have to call and bring me to your door / This is a cause for an alarm and I‘m at my last resort.” The imagery is reminiscent of the lyrics from The Receiving End of Sirens, using symbolism and veiled innuendos to express feelings of hurt and hope.
Easton Legacy's music has a number of correlations to bands like TREOS, 30 Seconds to Mars, and even Good Charlotte, but it’s the way they handle the hard stuff that makes their EP attractive and worth checking out.
heyyyy i was listening to your album in the car the other night, so i decided to check out your myspace to see if you had any new songs. what happened you your page?
Online Now!
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