Single of The Week is posted every Monday (usually)
Today we are looking at the new single from Sleeping With Sirens, Empire To Ashes. This is the second single off of their upcoming album, and unlike Legends it isn't completely terrible! I wouldn’t call it amazing or anything, but it is a lot better than Legends. The song still has a very pop feel but in more of a newer Fall Out Boy kind of way than in cheap knock off of Imagine Dragons way.
This track actually reminds me a lot of Centuries by Fall Out Boy with huge sounding drums and some cool guitar riffing. While the music is polished and almost over produced, it still retains a solid enough rock core. Weirdly enough this neo Pop-Punk track is delivered to us by a second rate Metalcore act. Perhaps Kellin Quinn doesn't want to do harsh vocals anymore or maybe the band as a whole realized any genre with the word "Pop" in it is more commercial viable than Metalcore.
As always for me, the weak link on this track Quinn’s high pitched vocals; I cannot stand this guys voice. Quinn’s voice is way too high and way too boyband sounding for my taste; and I am a legitimate fan of both Matt Bellamy and Justin Timberlake’s voices. The difference is Quinn doesn’t have the power and vibrato that Bellamy commands in his upper register or any of the coolness that Timberlake has in his delivery; Quinn just sounds like he swallowed helium. To be fair this song is one of his better performances, but I just can’t stand listening to his voice.
The other thing I don’t like is the half hearted “whoa-oh-oh-oh”s after each chorus, which is only slightly better than “remember, remember” and “hey, whoa-oh-oh” on Legends. For some reason the background vocals, ad libs and runs done by this band always sound really half assed to me. Whereas someone like Brendon Urie could do an entire song of ad libs and sound amazing, Kellin Quinn struggles to not sound like a robot. Maybe it’s just me but screwing up little things that basically everybody knows how to do bugs me more than major screw ups in a lot of cases.
As much as I dislike Quinn’s voice, this song is okay. It’s nowhere near as bad as Legends and even their synth choices aren’t too bad here. This will still likely be the worst thing I review this week, but it’s not overly horrible. If I was giving things numerical ratings I’d give this like a 4 out of 10, completely average with nothing notable to it’s advantage and a glaring issue of a lead singer.
