Stadium-rock may be a dirty phrase around here, but rock n’ roll wouldn’t be as gleefully infamous without it. It can, at times, provide us with moments of unbridled sing-along reassurance that big can mean better in the world of RAWK. Sad to say that, despite their refreshingly open admittance of debt to the genre (caused by practising in an aircraft hanger, apparently), ‘Something To Die For’ doesn’t really do enough to separate Undercut from the swathes of other bands that own the odd Foo Fighters album and have eyes poised on sports arenas.
Granted, there are occasional flourishes of magnificence here, such as the gargantuan drum-and-riff action of opener ‘Soil’ and the contented sigh of the chorus in ‘Everything Is Good’. Their attempts at making music big and bold enough to fill such space should be applauded, too, as they’ve accomplished it already. There’s just the nagging feeling that their songs, while sounding so massive, are also a bit too bland for their own good. “Stop me if I’m boring you to tears”, a vocoded voice intones in ‘Rising To Fall’. Not quite, but a few more redeeming features might be nice.
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5Thomas Blatchford's Score