Review: Abandoned By Bears - Bear-Sides

Abandoned By Bears new EP release “Bear-Sides” ranks itself among the styles of bands like Chunk! No, Captain Chunk and A Day To Remember.

With their catchy pop-punk choruses and metalcore breakdowns they have proven themselves to adequately mimic the sounds of an all too familiar pop-punk/easycore band. Any fans of Chunk or ADTR will enjoy the easygoing feel that the band radiates with songs like “We Can Break Loose” and “You Need To Stick Up!”, but lose an important sense of originality.

Although the band has a very similar sound to other bands of the genre, they break apart from the group slightly with their heavy use of synthesizer that can be heard in every song. This instrument gives a solid reinforcement and a creative touch to the otherwise generic sound of the EP. Overall, the instrumentation of the EP doesn’t prove to set itself that far apart from bands of the same field; the guitar riffs and chords are some that can be found in almost every other pop-punk band out there, and the drums don’t prove themselves to do any more than follow the minimum synchronizing.

Even without a separating element, the band can still find a place for pop-punk/easycore fans. Listeners of the genre will be content with the upbeat and major sounds of the catchy melody lines and unsurprising breakdowns. The release of this 4-song EP (one song being “INTRO”, a 38 second instrumental) gives a good look into the band’s consistent sound. Fans of the genre should definitely check it out if they are looking for the familiar sound of clean singing melodies and basic breakdowns.

Rating: 6.5/10

- Nic

Track by Track: Dingo’s “Inconsistent”

Dingo bassist Philip Wiltshire talks about the band’s new EP, Inconsistent, out now.

Buried In The Blue

Buried In The Blue is the first song on the EP. We picked it to be the opener because it is a really fast, heavy yet very melodic song which hits hard.
Lyrically the song is about losing yourself and “burying” who you used to be.
People change, everyone does for the better or worse. That’s what this song is about.

Horse Or Carriage

This song is about pulling your own weight. When you’re doing something, make sure you put your part in and don’t let others do everything for you. You can either be the horse, and do the work.Or you can be the carriage, and get pulled through your life, burdening others.Which one are you?

Going South

Going South is very melodic, short and fast. The lyrics are not serious and were only written as a joke. We do in fact not praise Satan. Musically, the song is very powerful. Fast riffs and melodic synths and a breakdown which is very easy to jump to.

Vanity

This is a really heavy song with a hardcore feel. It expresses how much beauty ideals have been blown out of proportion. People are forgetting what really matters such as values and morals. “Climb your way upon the sharpest thorn” is one of the lyric lines from the song. The thorn resembles the consequences and more and more people are “climbing” higher and higher to gain acceptance.

Casualties

This is a song about America. A country that, in our opinion, has way to easy access to guns. Anyone can arms themselves. We think this is wrong. We think this is the cause of so many deaths every year, and it can so easily be avoided.

The songs message is that the people who run America and the people of America need to stand up and fight for what’s important. We decided for this song to be the finishing song of the EP because the end is very powerful, it has a lot of melody and almost an epic feel.