Is this what music is coming to nowadays? I mean seriously, far too much of this is polluting my computer's speakers lately. It's one thing to have influences as a musician; it's quite another to do nothing but try and copy those influences. Hermosa Drive just take a bunch of bands they like and try to mix them together, taking various pieces from each, without any of the talent that the originals showed. Hermosa Drive follows an easy recipe, and unfortunately one followed all too often today: Take liberally from some popular bands, add elements to make yourself look "artistic," subtract all the originality and/or talent and voila. Seriously, if you want to be Thrice, be a Thrice cover band; don't take their sound and add some crappy elements and put it out.

The album starts with "Curse the Midnight Sky" (the title of which should be a warning in itself), which begins with some pointless piano work and radio feedback breaking into what I guess is supposed to be ominous drum and bass work. The screamer enters once during this long and pointless intro, but thankfully only for a brief second. The song actually begins almost 2 minutes through (the-3-and-a-half-minute song) with the screamer repeating "curse the midnight sky" over and over again. Then the music fades and the "song" is over. Are you joking? I mean…what the hell? Are they even trying?

"Tomorrow Is Just a Word" follows, opening with a boring scream over some double bass work. That's right, just keep tapping that thing as hard as you can, the song is still boring and you're still crying through the songs. I thought heavy music was supposed to be angry? What is this? The screams are fairly standard, and become pretty monotonous after a while (seconds) while the singing is fairly whiny, offering up clever lines like "your eyes penetrate my heart" followed by screaming of "How could you / Give me your love." Some solos randomly pop up, but they're fairly uninspired, though they do stand out amongst the rest of this. "This State of Delirium" is no less boring, with the screaming and singing going back and forth as the song just meanders along.

The piano once again makes an appearance at the beginning of "Death or Serious Injury May Occur," but no one knows why. As the song is coming to an end there's a spoken part: "Show some passion / For those you represent." How ironic. "Starpower In D" is painful, using some choking imagery ("as if I was choking you") and the line "that I killed innocents for you" keeps appearing for some unknown reason. "Broken Glass Is a Big Mess to Clean Up" doesn't disappoint, with a quickly spoken interlude in the middle: "This pane of glass is shattered to pieces / What was so beautiful is now lost / So shed a tear my little angels / There's nothing here for you today." Is that supposed to be deep and meaningful? I don't get it apparently.

I'm not sure whether this band is even trying with the lyrics or whether they're trying too hard. Either way they are horrible. The music is boring and contrived, obviously an attempted blending of a bunch of other bands gone awry (apparently when they hit frappe on their mix of other bands, the cover shot off and the mixture exploded into something awful). I'm sure some people will eat this up following the "screamo" bandwagon, but even that would be a shame. And as icing on the cake, this is supposed to be their debut and it only features 6 songs (thankfully). Believe me, you won't be complaining there aren't more.