Sophia
My Hands, My Greedy Hands
6.3
The disc: My Hands, My Greedy Hands. The band: Sophia--six moderately chubby Christian cubs from Nashville, Tennessee playing metalcore. Thinking it would be something different? It isn’t, in fact the band plays it pretty close to the vest with this style, but I’ve heard worse. Much worse.
I’ll hand it to them, if only because there are so many of these acts out there who are more than happy to simply take the best of the leaders and blatantly refurbish it in a new, freshly tattooed wrapping without even trying to pass it off as their own vision. At least Sophia sound honest, and seem to be genuine in their attempt to be taken seriously regardless of their beliefs; it’s all about the music to them and I respect that. But honestly, even though they are good at what they do and do it with a ton of personality and charm, their chunky, pinch harmonic-heavy delivery makes me feel like I’m sitting in rush-hour traffic jam listening to ten different cars alternately honking their horns around me, with a dude next to me who really needs to tune-up his muffler.
It’s all breakdowns mingled with airy, lively arrangements, a mixing of gruff shouts that stay away from the death metal belch, along with super clean vocals to break things up (split between four different vocalists, much less), a few bluesy guitar riffs, some atmospheric stuff, you know the drill. They toss in a piano interlude during “Wisdom Is More Than Just Thought”, and tend to go for lighter passages rather than just keep downpicking as hard as they can to fill the airspace. They know what they‘re doing, but like the other hundred-something bands like this, things get predictable very quickly between heavier and mellower sections, and with the case of closer “Feeding Bob Potter”, dreadfully repetitive. Shortly after the three-minute mark rolls around, an incessant ‘I will follow you…’ line is sung continuously over clean strumming, sparse power chords, and background screaming before eventually fading a-cappella style into oblivion. It gets a little daunting.
Apologies all around, but this just doesn’t do it for me. Even though Sophia really try their hardest to be individualistic and do their own thing, they’re pretty much locked into the style as tightly as you can get, and still sound like hundreds of other average faceless bands who are also entirely too commonplace. Nothing new, albeit full of spirit and vigor, all I can do after listening to this is put my hands (my dirty, sinful hands) up in the air and shrug with complete indifference. Hopefully they’ll sign to a label that lights a creative fire under their asses and gives them a reason to stand out among the pack, but as for now, Sophia are just more faces in the crowd unless you habitually sprout major wood for the scene, in which case, grab the lube and have a blast to this little EP. God bless ya‘, guys.
