Sheep Among Wolves have gone through a number of different line-up and sound changes since their beginnings as an acoustic poetry project in 2010. With their new EP ‘Mixed Nuts’, the band have created a punk, rock, indie infused record and they are keen to point out on their Facebook that they are ‘not a hardcore band’, but to be fair, this is pretty obvious on the first listen.
Opening track ‘Alone’ does have some potential and there is a catchy choral moment near the end of the track that provides a nice little ending. However, it is also a real shame that the production and recording quality is relatively poor, it does nothing to hide the below par vocals. With a sound reminiscent of an early Taking Back Sunday in terms of the staccato guitar and vocal style, Sheep Among Wolves offer something that has been popular for over a decade, but whether this particular recording will evoke a similar sort of reaction is unclear.
‘Asep rock’ is the second song on the EP and compounds the sense that Sheep Among Wolves might find themselves being the sheep among the wolves, namely of other, better artists. The vocals are shaky and weak and it sounds like a plethora of college band releases, only really listened to if you or your mates are in it. The end of the song offers a decent bi-vocal round, nicely offset between some jagged guitar and the rolling drum beat, the symbols being raucously hit and some nice vocal pauses giving the song a stronger finish.
‘Worth it’ has some La Dispute-esque guitar and vocal parts and is probably the best song on offer. There are some really good spoken word vocals over a raft of funky sounding guitar and bass. The vocals here sounding much stronger than the previous two songs, except for near the end where there are some off-key backing vocals, but hey, anyone who’s seen Taking Back Sunday knows that Adam Lazzara’s live voice leaves a lot to be desired, so perhaps there is hope yet for Sheep Among Wolves.
The thing with ‘Mixed Nuts’ as a food item is that there needs to be a blend of what can be called the higher end nut (such as the Pistachio) and the lower end nut (such as the peanut – despite it actually being a legume, not a nut) which gives an all-round sense of nutty satisfaction. Unfortunately for Sheep Among Wolves their EP ‘Mixed Nuts’ offers more of the peanut style musical offering and this would seem largely down to some average at best recording/production. It may be labelled as ‘raw’, but it would have been interesting to see how much better the EP sounded with some higher end production and recording, as well as smoothing out some of the vocals, so at least they are in-tune.
DAVE BULL