Endwell
Homeland Insecurity
5.5
What we have here is typical Victory fare: polished emocore that is evidently most comfortable in the middle of the road. Afraid to occupy the left or right lane, New York’s Endwell combine melody-infused -core, clean singing, and edgeless growls to arrive at a competent yet lackluster debut, which, as Homeland Insecurity implies, features too many puns.
While Endwell aren’t nauseating, their music is sterile despite the all-around decency found in every aspect of this recording. Sounding like the most innocuous efforts put out by Victory, Harvest Earth, Facedown, and Solid State, Homeland Insecurity fails to make a lasting impression, and you can forget about uniqueness altogether. Occasionally, however, the group will lean more towards the hardcore scene by incorporating gang shouts, or the metalcore side of things by injecting commonplace rhythms in which the guitars and drums coincide while the growls continue to ramble on about what are, I’m sure, very important issues.
The titles of the songs themselves are either terrible puns (“Boy Meets World War III,” “Whine and Dine”), or simply terrible in general (“Single and Loving It”, “Goodbyes are Always Coldest in December”, “I’m Frozen You’re Dead” ,“Zombies Never Think Twice”). Mainly though, Endwell get enough right to avoid being annoying, but at the same time are nothing less than forgettable. Homeland Insecurity is just plain average.
