Vocalists usually don’t bother me. I like to think I have tolerance for the weirder singers on Earth, that maybe I possess an ability to find beauty in the ugly. But with this, no, frankly the singer sounds like a bad Smashmouth impersonator. This is extremely annoying, and I couldn’t quite get over it. So this is warning number one.
Warning number two would be their approach. It isn’t a particularly novel approach since it relies too heavily on the jerky sing-chant rhythms. Better bands might turn this into strength, but with The Night Marchers it sounds too awkward.
Thankfully, not all the album is just bad singing and irritating rhythms. Whenever it feels like the music is unleashed from the terrible singing and predictable stop-go rhythm, it gets very interesting. “In Dead Sleep” proves this pretty well. Halfway into the song you get the propulsion of the guitars and drums working out to show a different (better) side of the band. While this is by no means the only example of this, it does last the longest.
An instrumental band without the singer and perhaps a less constrained drummer might be worth something more than this product. Those few times that it drops the prerequisite singer and lame jerk rhythms are easily the best, and show there’s another band wanting to break out.