CD Review

Drop the smile and empty soul describes this album perfectly. It is a brilliant reminder of everything that is wrong in rock today - complete soullessness. Made up of three guys who met during high school (Sean Danielson, vocals/guitar, Derek Gledhill, drums, Ryan Martin, bass) Smile Empty Soul is yet another “I’m so young and angry” band, this time from Southern California. Unfortunately these bands still have not figured out that talent is NOT proportionate to how loud you yell into the mic; nor does it make what you’re saying any more important. Take Smile Empty Soul’s breakout song, “Bottom of the Bottle.” Here Danielson tells us that that he sometimes doesn’t understand what makes him “carry on.” Then, I gather, he thinks about it and reveals his motivation: “I do it for the drugs/I do it just to feel alive/ I do it for the love/that I get from the bottom of a bottle.”

Simple fact is - I don’t care what Smile Empty Soul has to say and quite frankly it’s difficult to differentiate any of the songs from one another in the first place. There’s a lot of crooning about being lost and brokenhearted and even more vapid yelling about how tough life is. Whatever - get over yourselves and come back when you have something real to say and more original music