Scary Kids Scaring Kids "The City Sleeps in Flames"

Take the punk mentality of an early Green Day album, the pop minded song construction of Jimmy Eat World, the skilled metal/punk guitar playing of Sum 41, and the psychotic energy of The Mars Volta, then throw in some great lyrical content and a great overall mood, and you’ve got yourself “The City Sleeps In Flames” by Scary Kids Scaring Kids. That’s right, Scary Kids Scaring Kids is the name of the band. I realize I’m getting a bit obscure on you out there this week, but trust me, this is an album that really deserves some attention.

One thing most of my friends know about me is that I hate singers who scream. The occasional scream is passable, but when you get that constant death metal screaming going on I am just not interested. When I first turned on The City Sleeps In Flames this morning, I was fully drawn in. The singer can sometimes lapse into screams, but it’s always done in a way that helps get across the emotion of the song. The album itself opens with a look at the state of the world around us. And according to this band, the state of things isn’t too great. They go from exploring society’s short comings in the early stages of the album to examining their own short comings as the album moves into the middle stages. Lost love and lost identity and just a general sense that everything isn’t alright make up the major themes of the album. Which sounds a bit cliché but each song is so well done and so full of atmosphere and emotion that the angst doesn’t come off feeling cheesy. The album as a whole has a great feeling. Listening to it you can’t help but feel like a spectator watching the world around you fall apart.

If you’ve never heard of Scary Kids Scaring Kids don’t feel bad, I’m not sure that anyone has ever heard of them before now. But the fact is, they’ve released an album that is worthy of some attention. If you have any interest at all in the types of bands I mentioned at the beginning of this review, chances are high that you would really like this album. It’s not often that a band can make an album that sounds like everything else out there while still maintaining a very unique identity. However, that’s exactly what “The City Sleeps In Flames” has managed to do. All at once you feel like you’ve heard this all before and like you’re hearing it done for the very first time. I really hope this album gets picked up by radio so it can get some of the attention it deserves.

Four out of Five Stars

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