Socialburn's Where You Are - album review Old Archive published in Daily Evergreen 2003

Socialburn-Where Your Are
2 ½ out of five stars
The Quest for a New Sound

As the popularity of Kurt Cobain today seems to grow exponentially, Socialburn tries to provide an example of what Nirvana might have sounded like today.
Socialburn's album “Where You Are” is an all too common mix of power chord driven alternative rock with a high pitched screeching voice at the helm. In an attempt to pick up where Kurt Cobain left off, Socialburn shoots and misses. The album provides nothing revolutionary to the world of music. In every song Socialburn tends to copy different artist styles from the early 90’s without really defining their own sound.
Lead singer Neil Alday’s voice continually cracks as the band tries to follow Nirvana’s tradition of writing songs out of the singers range. The first track alone “Break Back” starts of with Neil butchering a series of notes to a catchy guitar lick.
This seems to be the theme through most of the album as many of the songs tend to lack that special something to make them worthy of another listen. Yet the album does have its good points.
The albums first single “Down” can be herd on the radio at times and actually starts to grow on you after a while. The beginning riff drives the song quite well and allows any rocker to bop their head, while the chorus seems to have that necessary ability to become stuck in your head. The song sounds like it could be on a Puddle of Mudd CD (another supposed continuation of Nirvana).
Yet even this track is pretty much a meat and potatoes rock song. Socialburn doesn’t seem to do anything really exciting till latter on in the album. During “One More day” hints of Our Lady Peace can be herd. While in songs “U” and “Utopia”, Socialburn seems to have selected a new band that many have overlooked in the past, to draw inspiration from. The intro to “U” sounds like it came off of Candelbox’s self titled album. With a spooky start and a strong middle this song is very fun to listen to.
While the song “Utopia” is by far the best song on this album. Neil’s voice for some reason comes out very powerful at certain parts of this song. During many of the high parts the voice cracking that is such a constant through the rest of the album is gone. While the two guitar arrangement on this song provides the listener with a new interesting sound and as a result provides a great rock tune.
Yet to by an album for one song is pointless, especially in today’s post Napster world. Socialburn is only a good buy for rock fans, particularly those fans of Puddle of Mudd and similar bands. Though Socialburn does nothing really exciting they do cause you to rock your head at certain points.