The last time I reviewed Forever Changed, I said they sounded a hell of a lot like Further Seems Forever. ‘Chapters’, their brand new album, hasn’t changed my opinion. ‘Refusal’ is so FSF-lite that you’d be hard pushed to distinguish the two bands; especially as FSF have had so many singers. The last Forever Changed record showed a lot of promise and had a number of good tunes, and in a way I could say exactly the same about this record. It’s well polished, the songs are slick and catchy and everything appears to be in the right place. But something’s missing; there’s a sense of stickability that’s not here. After listening to this record several times over, I couldn’t find myself humming any other tracks or even sing along.
On an individual basis, many of Forever Changed‘s songs are good. ‘No Way Out’ and ‘Starting To Sink’ are strong driving songs that sound great. But when you put all of the 12 songs here together something is missing and I’m not really too sure what it is. As I said, each individual track has all the relevant parts, but for whatever reason when you listen to the album all the way through, the songs blend into one another. If you like the melodic emo-rock sound of bands like Further Seems Forever and Piebald, then I’d recommend giving Forever Changed a spin. But, for me, there are better records and bands out there that do this kinda thing in a more memorable way.
www.foreverchanged.net
Floodgate Records
paul