Doubting Thomas
You're Out Of Your Element

This is the first ten-song CD release from these four Casper lads, and admittedly I had my doubts as to the overall quality of this album. Although they will never hold a candle to the Kings of Metal, Manowar, I was pleasantly suprised.

All the songs are catchy pop punk tunes that seem to be heavily influenced by Blink 182. The lyrics are pretty decent, though some of the arrangements need a little polishing. The one song that really caught my ear was "Turn Away." It was a little more metal, and God knows I like metal. In typical punk fashion, the subject matter ranges from the death of one band member's aunt to the lampooning of one "David Sheelds," who I gather must be a real bastard.

My biggest beef with this CD is with the production. The sound quality is poor and was probably done on a four-track recorder, which gives it a great unrefined quality, but, just like a good bag of blow there is a fine line between barely been cut and a complete waste of money. Secondly, I think the band should have put out a smaller 3-4 song release on vinyl, to showcase their strongest songs, and drum up a bit more of a fan base. Admittedly, CD technology is available to almost everyone relatively inexpensively, but perhaps the album would have benefitted from more time in the studio, or a studio at all for that matter, more than it would from a flashy CD format.

The final score? Start with A for effort, subtract two points for crappy production, add 0.5 for Jesus from The Big Lebowski as the cover, and you end up with a strong C+, B-. or somewhere around a 6 on the 1-10 thingamajig. For those of you unfamiliar with a rating system, let me clarify for you. Think Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil, then think of the Generation Swine album. Somewhere in between those two lies the Doubting Thomas CD.

-Dane Mattern

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