Posted on: July 15, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

In Theory – This Is It / 2007 Shelter From the Storm / 11 Tracks / http://www.intheorymusic.com /

In Theory play a brand of emo rock that would make Yellowcard proud. The first cut on the album is “Help Me Help You”, and the track could easily be the band’s first single. The distinctive vocals of In Theory mesh with very confident guitar lines and splashy drums to make a song that could easily rocket up the tracks. Imagine Simple Plan mixed with Sum 41, with a little dash of the aforementioned Yellowcard; this is what In Theory most closely approximates. After four minutes of “Help Me Help You”, the band has tremendous momentum and a captive audience ready to do any of the band’s whims.

The band decides to expand their sound considerably with “A New Medication”. This track has a very emotive type of guitar opening to it, using an amalgamation of early Pearl Jam and the heavily earthy emotive style of the late nineties to make the instrumentation stand up. The vocals fit into the same general sound as they did during “Help Me Help You”, but since the context is completely different, it feels like a completely different approach. While “A New Medication” does not feel to be as intuitive of a signal as “Help Me Help You”, the vocals during the track lend themselves easily to fans wishing to singing along. The number of vocal layers on this track, blending with Blink 182-like drum lines, makes this just as much of a classic as “Help Me Help You”.

The band wows from the start of “This Is It”, and “Murder He Wrote” keeps this energy up. The band again shifts sound, this time taking up the standards of acts like Hawthorne Heights and My Chemical Romance. It seems like the latter is more influential than the formal, in that the vocals lead forth from Gerard’s school. In Theory does not necessarily succeed as clearly with “Murder He Wrote” as they did during the last few tracks on “This Is It”, but this is only a momentary setback. The band is able to get back on the horse with “Love Me or Leave Me”, going back to the style that the band first assaulted their fans with. This disc is a solid bit of emo rock, and the only suggestion that I would have for In Theory would have to be a further diversification of their own sound. Listeners can hear a number of bands influencing the output on “This Is It” but do not hear enough of In Theory at points.

Top Tracks: Help Me Help You, Love Me or Leave Me

Rating: 6.2/10

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