Straight from La Habra, California, comes a good band with a weak debut, which despite it, they still became one of my favorite bands when I was 13, which I do still enjoy, as I'm just getting around to checking out the rest of their discography.
Zebrahead is something simple, yet great, because they learned to perfect it. They started out as a pop-punk band, much like bands such as Blink-182, Green Day, etc, but gained a rapper amongst their ranks to become a fusion of hip-hop and pop-punk without being obnoxious at all. To describe their sound to people in the know of other bands, they're almost like (don't stop reading when I say this) Limp Bizkit, but less metal, no annoying white-boy stuff, no big emphasis on the hip-hop portion of their music, with an awesome chorus singer reminiscent of other singers in pop-punk bands with a slight accent. Basically if you add that, and a cup of self-awareness, silliness, and fun into the mix, you have Zebrahead.
But the members of Zebrahead are as follows, taken from Wikipedia:
- Justin Mauriello – Rhythm guitar, Vocals
- Ali Tabatabaee – Vocals
- Greg Bergdorf – Lead Guitar
- Ben Osmundson – Bass
- Ed Udhus – Drums
Now, onto the CD. This is so far from being anywhere near their best, this is the absolute bottom of the barrel of their discography. The production leaves much to be desired, their songwriting skills were at their weakest. The bass was a bit weak, as were the drums, and the guitar sounds a bit grainy and raw, which doesn't fit their music, so it's a negative aspect of this album. Justin's vocals were alright, surprisingly, and so were Ali's, but they don't sound like they're comfortable at all with recording. Justin's singing sounds a bit awkward at times, and Ali sounds a bit too much like he's trying to prove that he can rap, as he sounds too aggressive at times, and actually sounds like he's losing breath at times, but at least they're both trying.The sad part is, that above paragraph (or wall of text) is the most in-depth I can go about this. There's just not much here. It's a bad place to start out with them. A lot of the songs on here were later re-recorded for their next album, and it's a good thing, because these songs have good, catchy concepts behind them, they just can't be fleshed out here.
4/10
Recommended track(s): Check
