‘White Lies’ was a seriously underrated record. For me it’s right up there with Ferret’s best releases and even a couple of years on I’m still putting ‘I’ll Make It To Brigades’ and ‘Red Dress’ on in-car playlists. The band seemed to be able to mix up their obvious metal influences with something more contemporary and it worked to great results. While bands were dropping breakdowns and screams all over the shop, LHH somehow managed to avoid the obvious genre rules and wrote and recorded a great little album. It got some great reviews, but didn’t really break out of the ‘scene’ which was a shame.
On first listen ‘America Underwater’ appears to be a more polished and refined record. The overblown guitar licks seemed to have been slightly toned down or, in the case of the album’s title track, the riffs are much more in the background. The choruses are more melodic and the vocals are very much in the foreground now – whereas the guitars seemed to be the band’s best weapon last time round, they now take more of a backseat. In short, this is much less a metal album and is certainly more ‘current’. I think the current Warped Tour crowd will very much love this record.
That’s not to say it’s perfect. The album’s opening salvo of the aforementioned first single, ‘Saints and Sinners’ and ‘You’ll Never Know’ get the record off on the right track. But as the album progresses the tempo seems to drop a little, sometimes bordering on radio-friendly rock territory, and I personally don’t think it suits the band as much as their faster material. ‘Wait To See You’, for instance, is pretty dull, while ‘Pants Off Dance Off’ pointlessly uses dance beats and it comes off like a Metro Station b-side. Not good. That said, there are more than enough good songs on here to satisfy older fans and I think the singles will expose the band to many new ones. Expect a leap forward in popularity, but for me ‘White Lies’ just (and I mean just) shades it.