The Involvement: Welcome to the REM World – Depth Beneath Quick Appeal and Guitar Power

Posted By: Rick JammPosted date: September 04, 2013in: ReviewsNo Comments

The Involvement is made up of two failed musicians who refuse to give in to the underwhelming bullshit of everyday life. Instead they locked themselves inside of a really small recording studio outside of a dump on Long Island, and continue to make music just for the fuck of it.

The consequence is that The Involvement has delivered a masterpiece with this Ep. This hard-to-categorize band mixes hard-driving, no-nonsense rock with liberal doses of punk, some grunge and even a little metal in a few places, with mesmerizing vocal arrangements.

Ignorant critics and listeners who can’t describe anything without making comparisons have mistakenly equated this band to many others, but the key to understanding this album is to stop trying to figure out what it slightly sounds like, and realize that Welcome to the REM World is in its own category.

The best aspects of this Ep are the incredibly melodic vocals, along with the gut-wrenching guitar riffs. The drums and bass are relentless and to-the-point, while the intricate and dramatic guitar-vocal interplay carry the song arrangements with force. The lyrics are dense with allegory and metaphor, and though they sound terribly simple, you may spend years trying to figure out what they’re talking about.

As mentioned before, The Involvement is really a unique and hard-to-pigeonhole band. They are too melodic and adventurous for hardcore punk. Welcome to the REM World, which I think is the band’s third Ep, is filled with fast tempos, relentlessly pounding rhythms, dense collages of sound, and killer choruses; this is 100% The Involvement and nothing else.

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This is hands-down one of the most energetic and explosive 4-track Ep’s I have listened to recently. Welcome to the REM World contains a host catchy chorus lines that make the songs on it very radio-ready, yet there is a lot of depth beneath the quick appeal and guitar power.

If I haven’t made it clear by now, I’ll be more specific, every track, from the killer opener “Call Me Over”, through “Can’t Believe It’s Still Long Island” and “Kill Everyone!” to “I Broke Love”, absolutely rules.

I’ve never been able to listen to many punk albums all the way through and say that I honestly enjoyed all the tracks, even though to be honest this Ep is pretty short. Here John and Chase of The Involvement have bended multiple genres into one, and throughout this package only two things stay similar; the vocals and the band’s incredible talent.

Welcome to the REM World has all the power, energy, and emotion you’d expect from their peers. Instead The Involvement is ever changing and always progressive, on this Ep, taking it to the next level and way beyond!

Welcome to the REM World is a must have for anyone who is a fan of loud, kinetic, dynamic, powerful, and beautiful music. I think it’s important to stress that this isn’t music with no purpose. In this day and age where there’s a real lack of honest, hard-hitting music, The Involvement just tells it like it is…without giving a shit!