10 Years - Division (CD)

All Music Guide

Knoxville Tennessee altmetal act 10 Years made their majorlabel debut with 2005's The Autumn Effect, an utterly ordinary effort much beholden to the likes of Tool and Staind, which nonetheless scored a big radio hit with the single "Wasteland." Reportedly recorded in a fractious intraband environment (hence the title), Division nonetheless sounds like the work of a band that carefully and thoroughly deconstructed their previous hit and attempted to replicate it several more times for the followup. Division is a smooth, radiofriendly record with the debut's aggressive tendencies almost entirely sanded off in favor of new producer Rick Parasher's glossy layers of instruments and vocals. Even potentially powerful quiettoloud rockers like "Russian Roulette" and "11 a.m. (Daydreamer)" feel overmanicured and far too polite, singer Jesse Hasek's vocals losing their emotive power in the overall listlessness. Even worse, hints that the band now consider themselves "artists" occasionally rear th...eir ugly heads: the coda of "Picture Perfect (In Your Eyes)" is nearly as long as the body of the song itself, and even worse, it features a spokenword poem read by one of the album's female backing vocalists. (Simply that the album has female backing vocalists in the first place is a warning sign for this brand of altmetal call it "November Rain" Syndrome but really, a poem? Why not just call the guy from the Moody Blues? He can't be busy.) It may well have the intended effect of prolonging the band's chart life temporarily, but Division sounds if anything like the exact opposite of artistic maturation. - Stewart Mason, All Music Guide Read more Less