Sleeping Giant – Dread Champions of the Last Days

Life(for me) has been slow lately, with the melting of snow and the coming of spring; the snowboarding season has faded away. So now I find myself with rather large amounts of time on my hands. Time I can now spend writing and actually contributing to this site, as opposed to coming home late, dead tired, and only able to pour sub-par material into my reviews.

This brings me to the topic of the moment, Sleeping Giant and their new release Dread Champion of the Last Days. Although it may not be toting much influence from the early day’s of hardcore, it’s still a pretty decent album. They seem to be aiming for the metal-core sound, much like most of the other bands on Facedown. The songs are fairly varied, including some interesting guitar riffs and drum patterns and a decent rhythm section. It’s the vocals that really stood out for me though; they’re ever changing throughout every song. At times I would be getting a whole Sinai Beach feeling(for the most part, that’s what the vocals sound most like) but then a dire scream will completely catch you off guard. Or at least that’s what happened to me. The lyrics seem to get a bit preachy; they reference God or their Christian beliefs in just about every song. This is probably something I shouldn’t complain about being that they’re a Christian band on a Christian label, but in a world where there is basically endless amounts of material to write about, having fourteen songs(also known as all of them) about faith probably won’t appeal to the atheistic crowd. The music can get pretty slow and boring at some points as well, and for the most part I never listen to slow music. I felt out of my element, which isn’t where I particularly want to end up.

If you are ready to drop some money on an album with about half good and half bad songs, I’d recommend trying this album out. There’s a pretty good chance that it will really appeal to many more people than it did to me, that is if you don’t mind being preached too. Whenever I see bands like this perform at shows, tons of people always get really into it, unfortunately I am not one of them. It mostly fades into the background while I’m listening to it, while I occasionally lapse back into semi-consciousness only to catch a phrase about religion that I much rather would have preferred not to hear. I can only stress that you find a track or two before buying this, which can most likely be done through the usual Internet outlets.