A Change of Pace

An Offer You Can't Refuse (2005)

Jordan Rogowski

Because biting the style of Hawthorne Heights wasn't bad enough, A Change of Pace decided to be ripoff artists as well. This is not incidental, this is two separate songs, with their entire lead-in chord progressions stolen from other songs. Take one listen, and you'll know exactly what I'm referring to.

Exhibit A: "Loose Lips Sink Ships." The song starts with some children's toy-like twinkling, then launches into a suspect familiar sounding chord progression. As I'm listening, what keeps repeating in my head isn't the band's lyrics, but "Memories, in flat lines!" That's where it's from. Re-listen to Thursday's "Cross Out the Eyes," in the part after silence where towards the end, when the guitars splash back in, they splash back in identically to how this song opens. The band didn't even bother to use a different tuning, every single thing about it is the same.

Exhibit B: "Death Do Us Part." The band wastes no time getting into their blatant rip off with this track. Anyone remember Finch? These guys do. They remember the song "Perfection Through Silence" pretty well too, because they ripped that entire chord progression directly off from them, and use it all throughout their own song.

Now I know it's hard to be original at this point in time, when seemingly everything you can possibly do with a guitar, bass, and drums has been done three or four times, but this is a blatant, shameless ripoff of two separate artists, and two separate songs. If you want to get a good idea what the rest of the songs sound like, go dig up that Hawthorne Heights album that you swore to all your friends was a present from your aunt, who didn't know what to buy you. Who knows, maybe they ripped them off as well, I'm just not well acquainted with them enough to know. If I really wanted to go through the trouble, I could probably find an instance or two in which they ripped off Underoath, but you get the idea at this point. I'm all for the supporting of small, hardworking bands. I am not, however, in support of taking one shitty band's style, and implementing well-known riffs and progressions into your own music, hoping nobody will notice.

Do not buy this album, do not see this band on tour, do not give them the satisfaction of even looking at their website. Just like your annoying little siblings, if you ignore them long enough, they'll eventually go away.