The recipe for Ten Falls Forth's Excuse Meâ¦I Believe That's My Ride in three easy steps:
Two parts overly nasal vocals. One part uninspired musicianship. One part vapid lyrical content. Mix until desired result is achieved.
To call this band run-of-the-mill is likely to give them more credit than they truly deserve. Encompassing everything clichéd and done before within the emo-punk genre, Ten Falls Forth's newest effort is a collection of 10 songs that could interchangeably appear on any record from any band on Fueled by Ramen. In order for an album like this to actually work, the vocals have to be the selling point. This is where the band first falters. The band's vocalist has a hard time holding a tune, and the songs suffer because of this. It's not to say he's not trying, because there's no real indication of laziness, but when it comes down to it, and the notes raise on the scale, the delivery becomes more and more grating by the second.
That voice prevents the band from gaining any foothold at the beginning of the album, and subsequently, they're not able make any forward progress over the course of the 40-minute duration. Things worsen, if possible, when somebody thought it would be a good idea to try and be a metalcore band for about 45 seconds in the middle of "Murder Kills Japan." They turn their amps up, start screaming, and lose any semblance of song structure they had previous to this -- one more in a list of many bad ideas.
Following up that terrible foray into a different genre that they cannot write good songs for either, Ten Falls Forth offer their best song on the album, though it's not saying much. "True Friends Forever" makes the most out of the verse/chorus/verse formula, and actually brings out some endearing elements of the band. Short lived, but it's something in an album that shows so little promise that even one song is hard to defend.
Great results can come from simple ingredients, but those ingredients had better be good in the first place.