Relient K – Apathetic EP

It’s weird, for a band with such a high profile as Relient K, this EP came and went with relatively no fuss. It was mentioned on a few sites, but rarely reviewed. The band only sent one or two e-mails about it to their fans, and haven’t even bothered to add it to their discography section of their website yet. Nevertheless, I guess when you have such a solid fan base like Relient K does you don’t need to press the release as much – because the fans will go out of their way to find the album, pick up the album and to hear the album. And if those fans went through all of that for this Apathetic EP, then I’m sure once the twenty four minute ride as come to an end they will be content with their purchase.

The seven song EP kicks off with The Truth and Apathetic Way To Be, two high energy, up tempo pop-punk songs that their repertoire is full of. They are, like most of Relient K‘s songs, nothing too far of the general pop-punk structure but they have that structure nailed to a T. They are perfect pop-punk melodies that gets you singing along instantly.

Switching things up a bit, the band then goes on to reconstruct three fan favorites into acoustic songs. The re-crafted versions of Be My Escape, Over Thinking and Which To Bury, Us Or The Hatchet all give off a sense of nice familiarity but have enough of a twist to them to keep them new and interesting. They then go into the slow, piano driven In Like A Lion (Always Winter) which pulls an obvious comparison to C.S. Lewis’ famed novel The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion The Witch & The Wardrobe (in fact, they cite the novel as inspiration for the song in the booklet, but I saw that afterwards) as they talk of a constant winter without ever having a Christmas while still maintaining a sense of hope.

After another slow piano driven song, The Thief, the Apathetic EP comes to an end and you quickly reach for the repeat button. It’s nothing extremely exceptional, but it is a solid EP from Relient K. Not only is it nice to hear some old favorites slightly different, but the new songs sound really good too. I still wonder when they’ll finally add it to their site.