Face Tomorrow For Who You Are (2002) Reflections

Disappointed, disillusioned and heartbroken when At the Drive In broke up? Or maybe just a little pissed that you missed their one time only Irish gig? Well have no fear, because the next best thing in frenetic rock has arrived, in the shape of Dutch band Face Tomorrow. Sounding one hell of a lot like the now defunct band from El Paso, Face Tomorrow has the same raw energy, passion and giant Afros. Well, maybe not the hair, but their first full length album, "For Who You Are", does have the ragged guitar, loud to the point of shouting vocals and even the loud-hailer distortion effects that made ATDI stand out, what it has to make it stand out in its own right is a vocalist who can go from being ATDI's Cedric to Muse's Matt Bellamy and everything in between in one song.

'For me', the second of 12 tracks, demonstrates this nicely with verses in that stretchy vocal style of Muse's front man (without going completely supersonic) rolling into the strained emotive and loud Cedric-style chorus, all placed on top of a throbbing ATDI guitar. It's this combination of loud and delicate that creates Face Tomorrow's distinctive style. And it's a good style, songs like 'Wasting time' and 'Live the dream' stand out on the album as near perfect combinations of sheer rock side by side with impassioned and beautiful singing.

There's also a vague Emo influence in there somehow, with 'Past' and 'Saved' being two of the more Jimmy Eat World style songs. Still mixing in the strong Cedric chorus, the verses are sung in that clear Emo vocal style and contain lyrics about smiling and throwing the misery out. Expect 'I Love You' to be a my-girlfriend-left-me song and you'll be wrong though, it's just under 2 minutes of tuning come distortion come music. Face Tomorrow is definitely a rock band, and a hard working one at that. They played 85 live shows in 2001. Bearing in mind there are only 52 weeks in a year, these are obviously people who are not afraid to put the effort in. "For who you are" is an album that's gonna appeal to a lot of people, it's definitely worth a listen.

(Sorcha)