\n After Fall Out Boy blew up into the mainstream, the Chicago music scene that birthed them has been swimming with potential breakout stars. In the past few years, Chicago scenesters such as The Academy Is…, Plain White T’s, and The Audition have piggybacked on FOB’s success and all had their brushes with the mainstream. Yet one of the area’s biggest bands, 2*Sweet, has chosen to remain without a record label, but has still been named one of the top unsigned acts in the country. The band is now looking to extend their success with their self-released debut
2*Sweet and Sleep have one major thing going for them: it doesn’t quite sound like anything else that is saturating the scene. The band combines some moderately heavy metal-influenced guitar riffs with opera-tinged vocals and melodies. And although it is all fairly unique in comparison to other bands, it doesn’t necessarily make them good.
"What I Did On My Summer Vacation" is a track that personifies the band’s sound fairly well.
It begins with very solid and thunderous guitar work, but falls apart completely when the vocals kick in. It seems like the band’s vocalist tries way too hard to make his voice sound haunting and opera-like by stretching out all the words. When he’s not mauling the microphone he’s bearable, but for the most part, it’s just too much.
The few bright spots are "Tarantula Perfume" and "Dateless for Armageddon." The first is a smoky funk jam that glides along oh so smoothly. In this band, the musicians are extremely solid and the son0g really lets them star a bit more. The second song closes the album on a high note due to its soaring chorus minus the annoying vocals. The chorus sounds more like a run-of-the-mill pop punk song, but it is a sound 2*Sweet does well.
Sure, 2*Sweet provide a refreshing twist on the emo sound we’ve been hearing for the past five years, but the results are disappointing. They’re a young band that has time to solidify their sound, but until they do, they will have nothing but terrible music to go hand-in-hand with their even more terrible name.
