Reviewed by Matthew Cordle

Flip:side are a team of voluntary youth and schools workers based in Sheffield under the banner of the Pais Project, a Christian organisation that seeks to serve schools and the local church. This version of the band, like their predecessors, plays in schools, youth events and leads workshops among other things. They state that their songs are themed around the idea of chance circumstances (is there such a thing?), and that people listening to the CD should question the purpose of life and see the answers in God's existence, love and purposes for us. The lyrics are good but, musically, I'm not sure where the record is meant to sit - for the most part it seems as if they want to be a band with metal inclinations with the distorted guitar style; perhaps nu-metal would be the place to put it when you include the rapping on "I'm Here", but then not all tracks are in that vein. "This World" is a fairly nice breather from the rest of the album. I'm sure the CD is fine as a take-home from a gig, but it doesn't really stand up as a commercial release. There are a good number of major timing issues between the players and some of the vocals are a bit dodgy (although the singer has a pleasant timbre) - these could be sorted either by hard practice or alternatively feeding everything into a sequencer or Pro Tools to fix it and make it groove more, also making use of Antares Autotune. It makes me wince to hear a compressor kicking in at the start of the first track on the CD after the guitar intro, and I may be wrong, but most of the tracks sound as if they were mixed by the guitarist as the guitars often dominate everything else. In summary, the message and the will is there, but more work needs to go in the playing and the production before this could seriously stand up.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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