Eighteen Visions: Eighteen Visions

When a group gets recognized more for the fact that they have a song that is used by the WWE as a pay-per-view theme song than anything they’ve done with five previous albums, you have to scratch your head. And such is the case with Eighteen Visions, an Orange County band who blend meaty riffs courtesy of Keith Barney and Ken Floyd along with the run-of-the-mill pipes of James Hart. “Our Darkest Days” sounds like a cross between Nickelback and Linkin Park, while they hit gold with the rougher, cocksure “Victim”. For the bulk of the album, Eighteen Visions see their assets as creating dark and murky hard rock tracks that are sure to get a 15-year-old boy’s knickers in a knot as the foot-stomping, head-bobbing “Burned Us Alive” is churned out with a rather flaccid chorus but great bridge. A solid departure and surprise has to be the mid-tempo pop rock of “Broken Hearted”, which has some bite and pizzazz going for it. Meaty, thick, and testosterone-heavy are three words to describe the record and tracks like “Coma” and “Another Pretty Suicide”, which sounds like a lightweight Velvet Revolver. There are also the obligatory “power” ballads such as “Last Night”. All in all, nothing new in these visions.