Emotionalpunk.com
Media Review
Music Quality: 8.0
Production: 7.5
Originality: 8.5
Tracklisting
2. Under Your Skin
3. Rough Road
4. Saddest Song
5. Keep You Guessing
6. I'll Confess
7. Light Years Behind
8. White Light! What Light?
9. Good For Nothing
10. He's A Space Case
11. Swarm
12. Hell Of A Saint
Amidst a scene and genre filled with a sense of speck and sparkle, The Cardinal Sin bring a sort of rawness that is sincerely refreshing on “Hurry Up And Wait.” The follow-up to an EP, this full-length sounds a bit crisper and louder, but wholly retains the same sort of clustered, textured production effort. Catchiness is also inevitable, especially with blasting choruses on tracks like “Rough Road,” when singer James Russell belts out, “trade everything for a better year!”
When you look at it from a totally elemental level, especially being a fan of some of their former band, The Cardinal Sin sound like they picked up where Cadillac Blindside left off—they perform with the same vivid, unique vocal vein, and continue to play in a similar primitive way as before. What’s most apparent with “Hurry Up And Wait” is that the song structure has been simplified—what was once mathy and almost messy is now straightforward.
In my ears, this is perfection—it contrasts the untidy guitars and angsty vocals with a sense of song structure. Though, to be honest, the disc can tend to almost get to be too much, in small to mid-sized doses, The Cardinal Sin’s debut LP is a fantastic blast from the past. RIYL: Early Get Up Kids, The Replacements, or, of course, Cadillac Blindside.