The Killing Moon – A Message Through Your Teeth

As soon as I saw this CD, I had absolutely no aspirations for it – none at all. I mean, they really fail at selling themselves visually. Not only is their band name weird and unfaltering, the CD title (A Message Through Your Teeth) gave little excitement either. Then, throw in the absolutely horrendously boring and flat artwork (which just features a guy sitting in an empty room, looking depressed staring at an empty chair beside him backed by a painful shade of baby blue) and The Killing Moon was already suffering in my books. But once Subject A started playing, I decided that they definitely deserved a chance.

You see, Subject A kicks off slowly – but a nice type of slowly. Its a soft, melodic, attracting guitar melody which gives off the initial feeling that maybe, The Killing Moon will be another laid-back somewhat acoustic project. But twenty seconds into the song, and those visions are blasted away from your mind as it goes into a hard rock breakdown. A few seconds later, the vocals come in – instantly reminding you of Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy fame. So it’s looking up, that’s for sure. But no, they don’t stop there. Once the chorus kicks in, the listener is then truly blown away. Because from way out of left field comes a nice horn section, saxophone and trombone, played through effect pedals. This really pushes the song forward, making you think of Vancouver’sCrowned King. At this point, vocalist Ryan Hannan really goes off the hook, and you can just picture him going crazy on stage with a nice mix of melodic singing and spaztastic screaming, somewhat similar to Billy Talent‘s Ben Kowalewicz. Add the back up vocals and dueling vocals in there, and Subject A is sure to convert any non-believer – it sure converted me.

The good thing though, is that A Message Through Your Teeth doesn’t stop there. No, it keeps going with that same energy and excitement all the way through. Although none of the remaining four tracks jump out at you as much as Subject A did, none of them hold the EP back either. Instead, it’s a solid rock output, and while the lyrics aren’t the most attractive or catchy thing around, the music does more than enough to make up for it. The only thing they need to look out for on their full length is how to make their songs stand out more amongst the pack, because while these five songs work good together, I think an entire album would probably quickly become boring if the tracks aren’t varied a bit more.