South Wales’ Seven Stories High instantly nail their colours to the mast on ‘CTRL’, the opening-track-proper of new mini-album ‘Take the Long Road Home’. The quintet come bounding out of your speakers like an enthusiastic puppy who’s been on the Red Bull, all double-pedals, pop-metal guitar fireworks and liberally-applied half-time drumming.
The Welsh band’s influences swirl proudly around these six songs, and out of the vortex emerges something with plenty of appeal to fans like bands of Four Year Strong, Set Your Goals and New Found Glory. The band have clearly spent plenty of time crafting individual beatdowns, juddering riffs and epic choruses, but there’s still a sense of something being not quite complete.
In fact, the single most frustrating thing about ‘Take the Long Road Home’ is how almost brilliant so much of it is. ‘Waiting For Wednesdays’ has a riff that’ll bury itself in your ear like a frightened guinea pig and refuse to emerge for days; ‘Wait For It’ treads into darker, more alternative territory, evoking pre-Self Title Paramore (and not just because of the female vocal), and is all the better for it. And while Rhys Hyett-Ferrier’s voice isn’t distinctive enough to warrant the acoustic ballad that’s apparently de rigeur on any longer pop-punk release these days, the song itself (‘Skin Me Alive’) is actually one of the better examples of the genre.
But so much of it’s held together by forgettable verses and bland, Neck Deep-esque vocalisms that we’re left with something that’s merely an interesting proposition, rather than a truly thrilling one. Like contemporaries Highlives and Tirade, Seven Stories High have the potential to bring some much-needed energy and excitement to the British pop-punk scene if they just distill the best parts of this mini-album into something with a little more identity and focus.
ROB BARBOUR