These Four WallsThis Is Not A Future

Kiwi-come-Aussie rockers These Four Walls have just released their third album This Is Not A Future and in it they have produced a rich, uplifting album of heavy melodic rock worthy of consideration alongside the best of their Australian contemporaries.

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The piano-driven opener The Sound chimes with sombre melody and tender harmony, working as a kind of emotional foreplay to Chaos, which grooves with a triumphant chorus and nu-metal bombast. The band channel the brand of hardened melodic rock that bands like Dead Letter Circus and The Butterfly Effect turned into such an Antipodean art, and here they do it as well as either of those bands.

Fire Away recalls a desperate-sounding Incubus and the soaring vocals–all generously-sized and prime stadium-bait–implore fixated attention. Over and Over brightens the mood slightly, sounding as much like a summertime-jam as anything here. The song drips with positivity, although veers away from kitschiness and retains the band’s signature college-rock sincerity.

With This Is Not A Future, These Four Walls have produced thirteen tracks of sizzling, emotional rock that let go of pretence to create a sincere and heartfelt album overflowing with epic melodies and singalong choruses

Midway-track Slow draws from a deep melodic-rock well and lays down a thick bass groove as the driver for this slightly more spacious mid-paced rocker. Follow-up Before I’m Gone pulses like the soft heartbeat of the album, showcasing simple melody and allowing the swaying energy to build up to its natural crescendo, displaying a strong adult-contemporary vibe and earnest pop sensibilities. Knots kicks back into a higher gear, returning to pace with anxious drive and suitably epic vocals, raising the volume back up to eleven.

The biggest weakness to the album reveals itself somewhere around here, and that is simply that the album is so big–so grand and bombastic–that it loses some of its variety too early, as the last half becomes a near-continuous onslaught of huge, elevating melo-rock anthems; each is worthy of an audience anywhere on earth, however it becomes harder to discern each song’s strengths as they reach the chilled, eclectic closer Nothingland.

With This Is Not A Future, These Four Walls have produced thirteen tracks of sizzling, emotional rock that let go of pretence to create a sincere and heartfelt album overflowing with epic melodies and singalong choruses (assuming you have the range for it).

STANDOUT TRACKS: Chaos, Fire Away, Slow
STICK THIS NEXT TO: Dead Letter Circus, The Butterfly Effect, Incubus

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