Many Will Play (Lobster)
by Tim Den
Staring Back is a unit that has four out of five of its members contributing equal amounts of material, something that most bands (especially young bands) don’t have. While this gives the band a nice variation of styles (from poppy to youth crew shoutings), most of the album’s moments still don’t rise above your standard “technical pop punk with Dokken-sounding guitars” bunch. Labelmates Whippersnapper and Tooth & Nail’s Hangnail, for example, are doing the same thing much, much better. Still good at what they do, Staring Back just isn’t better enough for me to think highly of them.
(www.lobsterrecords.com)