--Dom Vadino
Released September 6th, 2019 on Pure Noise Records
We’re in a weird time right now in terms of media output. Television shows are being revived on streaming platforms, video games are being remastered, and movies made twenty years ago are being remade—All with the supposed idea that nostalgia can pull in consumers who are trying to feel young or trying to remember their teenage years and other awkward parts of their late childhood. Senses Fail, with no doubt, has glommed onto this strategy with their release of their newly re-recorded first EP, From the Depths of Dreams.
The album was initially released in 2002 (later released again in 2003 with some additional content) and became a breakout hit, breaking the top 200 of billboard (Loftus). The band blew up, fitting right in to the emo/post-hardcore era of music and gaining a large fan base very quickly—especially after their follow up LP, Let it Enfold You. Buddy Nielson, the only remaining original member of Senses Fail, has been working at his craft for almost 20 years. There's a reason he has decided to remake this album and it could be for lack of not having any new content currently. This isn’t definitive - and of course if your job is to make music, you’re going to do what you can to satisfy your fans and that’s what this re-recording feels like: an ode to their fans.
Silence. A sample of a heartbeat plays. Suddenly, the opening riff to the oh-so-familiar track, “Steven,” is heard and we’re greeted with some strange effects on the voice of Buddy to open the track. Everything sounds amazing except the vocals. They sound right, but not good. We can finally hear what the drums sound like, compared to the drowned-out recordings of the original album. The guitars aren’t as muddy and screechy and the bass is finally in a frequency that the human ear can accommodate. This isn’t anything special, but it’s nice to actually be able to hear every instrument individually. Whatever they were thinking, they decided to put a series of effects on Buddy’s voice that make him sound very detached from the instruments. Almost like a high-end karaoke machine that tries really hard to meld your voice into the music, but fails because you bought the Walmart brand machine instead of the Yamaha.
Almost all of the tracks are the same: solid; re-recorded instruments; and weirdly effected, pitch-corrected, vocals. The only song that benefits from these changes is “Dreaming a Reality." There's something about the flange on the rhythm guitar in the beginning of the track that compliments the way the vocals are implemented.
At one point, I somehow managed to accidentally listened to the original version of “Bloody Romance” and I was really digging it for a hot second until I noticed it wasn’t off of the new release. Then, the new recording played and I was greatly confused with the translation. It’s a weird sensation you get hearing these tracks because it’s all “new” music, technically, but you already know all of the words and the format of each song. You can definitely rock out to it, but you sort of feel betrayed listening to it—being that the vocals are so different than the original. Buddy has even changed the way he pronounces the words since the original release, so it’s almost like listening to Senses Fail cover Senses Fail.
It may be a strange thing to say, but when you expect the original weird-slurring that Buddy’s voice had in the original, then hear a more coherent, distinct, vocal pattern - it’s a little jarring and it feels like it loses its authenticity. While Buddy’s vocals may have suffered from this new production, his screaming has not. Buddy’s scream has become pretty top-notch lately and it actually fits in really well with the recordings. Regardless, the changes are so subtle in this album, it seems like just a plain remaster of the album would have been sufficient.
If you’re going to re-record an album, there should be good reason. Reimagine the album. Take each song, pick them apart and say “this” works here and “that” doesn’t work there and re-conceptualize the whole idea of the collection. None of that happens here, unfortunately. If you end up listening to this, don’t expect to be surprised with the outcome. You’re going to hear what you’ve heard before with no curveballs; excluding the mismatch-y vocals.
Is From the Depths of Dreams still a good collection of music? The original album is so raw, fresh, and sloppy that the new one just feels like bonus tracks that would have slipped out of their latest album, If There Is Light, It Will Find You, in which Senses Fail reverted back to a more pop-punk sound (similar but not the same feel of Let It Enfold You and Still Searching) after making the hardcore sounding albums, Renacer and Pull the Thorns from Your Heart. It just feels like something was lost along the journey of the discography of Senses Fail and it just can’t be recreated or regained. Youth? Maybe. The album is still strong, but only in its original form. Alcohol? It’s possible, but unnecessary. Buddy is just a totally different (but still strong) artist from the one he was at eighteen.
Getting older happens and this album should have stayed in 2002 along with the lip rings and studded bracelets that accompanied this music. It will definitely get its attention from die-hard Senses Fail fans, but could leave the bulk of us worried about what’s to come next.
Check out their new video for "Bastard Son" below:
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