Denial Fest (Futurist)
by Jeff Fritz
Heavy, moody pop with crashing guitars fronted by the most expressive vocals I’ve heard recently. A week ago I would have said that the world has had enough of power ballads. Now, after hearing the song “All This,” I’ve probably changed my mind. At the end of the disc, Jaik Miller’s vocals on “Scary Dream Fade” are so overwhelmingly raw they raised the hair on the back of my neck. Powerful fucking track, I thought.
Then I read Xanax 25‘s press kit and got creeped out by the band’s depressive image and shockingly frank association with tendencies suicidal (it seems Miller and his sister just about simultaneously did themselves in with a bottle of 25mg. pills of, you guessed it, Xanax). Great, I thought, another band full of suffering bastards. Now that’s something that the world has definitely had enough of. Nevertheless, this tortured crew from New York is slinging around some really cranked-up guitar work and pulling off a cover of Madder Rose’s “Swim” that is, ahem, to die for.
The nine tunes on this disc are so fucking good that I can almost ignore the death cult trip. Almost.