Neon Escape
Release Date:
Highlights: Night Lights, Across The Sky, Early Bird
It seems that more and more I am finding emails in my Inbox from some band asking me to review their material. When Dan from the band Neon Escape emailed me, the first thing I noticed was the band name. I feel like a name is the first impression that someone gets before they even listen to the band. When I saw that they are called “Neon Escape”, the first thing I thought is “I am not going to like this.” I personally would’ve stuck to their former band name of Effigy. Neon Escape just sounded to me like it was going to be some kind of 80’s dance band with matching jumpsuits or something. Regardless, I decided to move on and give these cats a listen totally unaware of the surprises that would lie ahead.
Neon Escape’s debut album is a very progressive hard rock/metal sound. Think Rush meets Dream Theater with Yes’ Jon Anderson on lead vocals. Right off the bat I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was so not the band I thought I was going to be listening to. The opening song “Night Lights” was a great opener although it took me two listens to really appreciate it. “Across The Sky” is a very Rush like song that has a great hook and spot on harmonies. I was really starting to enjoy this album and it just seemed to get better with each song. When I got to the song “Early Bird” I was really blown away. The song has so many dynamics and so much depth. The album was really going well for me but then it just screeched to a halt on the song “We Won’t Wait Any Longer.” It was a well executed song but would’ve been better suited on an Enrique Iglesias album than a prog rock album. In this day and age, a band doesn’t need a power ballad to show substance. In my opinion, this song sounds contrived and poorly conceived. I almost didn’t want to continue listening but since the other songs were so good, I figured the others would be as well.
The song coming right out of the ballad “Fire & Ice” just drags and the vocals sound tired and bored. This was not the best choice of sequencing to come out of such a washy power ballad. I didn’t even make it through this one. “Everyone Shout” is a great song musically but lyrics like “Everyone Shout, it’s alright cause we are the same!” just seemed to be a bit cliché. It’s like these guys started out so strong and just eventually ran out of ideas. For such a progressive band, I really expected more substantial lyrics than the cheese they were delivering. It would be like if Rush were performing their songs with lyrics written by Poison. “Changing Like The Weather” was actually a pretty cool song and not quite as cheesy as the other songs but still full of clichés and yet another power ballad. Neon Escape must have thought that two power ballads weren’t enough so they put two more forgettable slow pacers “Ivan” and “Summer Rain. The closing song “Takeback” was a great closing effort but the vocal delivery is well, there’s no nice way to put this but, ok. If Randy Jackson from American Idol heard this he’d probably say, “Yeah, it was a good jam but the singer was pretty pitchy dawg.” I thought the singer just sounded like he was singing outside of his range and depth.
So the bottom line is that Neon Escape gets an A for technical musical ability. These guys sound like they could really do some amazing stuff. The lyrics are forgettable and mediocre, sometimes less than mediocre. The good news is that this band is obviously talented enough that they could really do something amazing if the right moves are taken and more emphasis was put on writing lyrics that were as good as the music they are performing. Then they could really turn a lot of heads. I would even give them a listen once again. Almost there but not quite.
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