Knockout – Searching For Solid Ground

Now, this album I was excited about ever since I had downloaded the couple songs of their mp3.com site. And luckily, I was not let down at all. This four piece band out of a Chicago suburb, Lake Forrest, have created a sound that you will like if you are a fan of Simple Plan, New Found Glory or almost any other punk-punk combo. With De’mar Hamilton on drums, Steve Jeanindes on guitar, TJ Minich on bass and vocals and rounded of with Jeff Warren on vocals and guitar have a distinctive sound ready to make waves in the music community.

They open the album with Break Away. It has a pretty fats beak with catchy lyrics. I think its a pretty good song to open up the album with. The second song is Sequel, which is a better song then Break Away. Its a slightly slower song, with a great drum beat by De’mar throughout. The lyrics are about someone saying they are sorry and wanting to be forgiving, “I’ll do whatever it takes to make up for all my mistakes”.

Now Regretta is a really cool song, but what I really want to talk about is the fourth song, and my personal favorite, Hideout. This is one of the songs you can get of their mp3.com site. It starts off with a slow guitar riff and then introduces another guitar or bass (please note: whenever I say it was a guitar riff, it might be a bass and vice versa, I suck at telling the difference between the two instruments). Then the vocals come in and the first two lines are slow before a quick acceleration in the beat. I just love the chorus, the vocals are hard and strong and go perfectly with the tune. It’s about someone who just needs a place to hideout and get away from it all. The pressure has overwhelmed them and he’s  about to give up. I feel that it is just a powerful song and my favorite on the album.

Artificial Pheromones is the fifth song on Searching For Solid Ground. This is another one of my favorites and the slowest song too. 24 Hours is the shortest song on the album at a mere 2:20. Its a fact paced song about a day that’s is all packed and confusion, and the person hopes to see everything clearly in the morning. Although being the shortest (but only by 7 seconds) this song is defiantly worth a listen to.

Aftermath (another one which you can download at mp3.com). It has a jumpy beat in which the vocals are perfectly timed with.  At 1:40 into the song, the song slows down and Jeff says “So this is what you want me to be, boring with no personality?”.

Well I guess they found the Solid Ground in the eighth song. This song, which the album is named after, is another fairly short one at 2:30. It starts off with a guitar riff, mixed with light drumming, which slowly gets faster and faster. Its just about standing up against people who are trying to control you and find solid ground to stand on. Its another powerful song.

Last Week and Far More are the next two songs, there’s not extra ordinary about the two songs, although I do really like the chorus. So This Is Sorry starts of really slow until the vocals start, then it speeds up. This is one of the better ones on the album. Around 2:30 in a great guitar beat starts off for 30 seconds. The last song on the album is the longest one at 5:41. It is called Leaving Chicago. This is my 2nd favorite song on the entire album. Its all a song about leaving Chicago. It is a fast paced song with good lyrics. My favorite part is at around 2:25 when it goes soft and slow and then they start repeating “I gotta get, I gotta get away from this”. I just love this song and its a great ending to the album.