Album Review: Basement – Promise Everything
2 min read
As Basement’s first album since Colourmeinkindness in 2012, Promise Everything marks the end of a long wait for new material after they ended their hiatus in 2014 with the release of the Further Sky EP. Given the positive reception of their previous album and the gestation period of Promise Everything, listeners were left eagerly anticipating the comeback.
Unsurprisingly, it comes across as exactly what you would expect, painting a very similar picture to their second album. It’s still steeped in the same punk and hardcore sounds that feel predictable rather than expanding on their sound and style. While fans will surely enjoy this, on a wider scale it doesn’t hold up as well; the album does have its fair share of exciting punk tracks, though, with Lose Your Grip and the title track being particularly memorable.
The real standouts are the songs leaning closer to alt rock than anything else. Aquasun retains the album’s recurring chugging guitars, but keeps itself in check rather than exploding into a bombastic chorus, giving it a nice twist compared to the album before this point. The album’s slow jams simplify things even further; Oversized dips between calm verses and slower choruses so much that it would bring the album’s momentum to a screeching halt were it not so enjoyable, whilst Halo keeps a consistently mellow groove up until the guitars pick up near the end to achieve a similar goal.
Even then, however, the songs never really find much differentiation beyond tempo and fullness, making for an overall monotonous experience. The songs stand well on their own, but lose their distinct feel when placed next to each other in the context of the album; this is twice as disappointing when considering its aforementioned similarity to their previous album. Fans of Basement will find something to enjoy in Promise Everything, but there’s little here to attract the attention of outside onlookers.
