Taproot - Our Long Road Home

Rating

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RIYL

Deftones
Trapt
Chevelle
Staind

Tracklist

1. Path Less Taken
2. Wherever I Stand
3. Be The 1
4. Hand That Holds True
5. Take It
6. It's Natural
7. As One
8. You're Not Home Tonight
9. Stethoscope
10. Run To
11. Karmaway
12. Footprints

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Recent Ratings

Fans were on the fence with Taproot's last album, Blue Sky Research, and it severely divided many. A mixed bag of alternative rock, it included some of their best work and it continued to showcase Taproot's growth of at least trying trying something different with each new album. But now with Our Long Road Home the band seems confused and stalled when deciding which direction to take.

Opening with an album highlight, the heavy “Path Less Taken” is a surprisingly great nod back to their hard-rocking alt-metal Deftones-aping debut, but it's kind of a metaphorical premature ejaculation for the record as nothing seems to surpass it over the 38 minutes the record runs.

Taproot posted a MySpace bulletin a while ago expressing how they'd just got back from a dredg show and had been freshly inspired by seeing them, so I was somewhat hoping for them to "pull a Strata" on this record and go all dredg on us. Unfortunately, this hasn't been done, but we are treated to one dredg-inspired track, “As One,” which has the band's influence stamped all over it.

The trouble with this album is it's far too formulaic and lacks any sort of experimentation or deviancy from the norm, which is the opposite of their last two releases. The blatant nu metal of “Take It” sounds like a bland mixture of Papa Roach and Korn, while “You're Not Home Tonight” is the blase radio single, which was also the first song to be posted by the band preceding this release. When it was, the song was met with mixed reactions from listeners.

What Taproot have delivered to us is an underwhelming, fairly standard, alternative rock record which lacks any of the redeeming features of their previous works. While there are a few songs here that will satisfy rock radio, there are also too many generic moments in what sounds like a patchy mix of their last two records in where Taproot have lazily tried to please everybody with middling results.

--Rich Taylor

Author

Rich
Last updated: 09/29/2009 09:01PM

Comments

lpshinobi
10/23/2008
07:15AM
Age: 24
Location
VT
I think I listened to this album once, and I haven't thought twice about listening again. It was so average, considering how good BSR was.

My Top Songs of '09
The Appleseed Cast//as the little things go
Caspian//sycamore
Sunwrae//Chinook Winds
Dredg//down to the seller
If These Trees Could Talk//the sun is in the north
From Monument to Masses//an ounce of prevention
Straylight Run//i'm through with the past


LpShinobi's Post-Rock and Shoegazing Recommendation, via YouTube

Lpshinobi's Post-Rock Band, New Song Posted

Rick Gebhardt
10/23/2008
07:25AM
Age: 32
Location
Minnesota
I liked this album when I first listened to it, but it has no staying power. I rarely come back to any songs from this. It's unfortunate.

Find me EVERYWHERE:




BobbyLight
10/24/2008
02:10PM
Age: 31
Location
Milwaukee, WI
Yeah, this got on spin out of me and then I took it off the iPod. There is nothing here that is even close to standing out.

homemadebullshit
10/24/2008
02:26PM
Age: 29
Location
Ann Arbor, MI
I wish they would put out good music again. I loved Gift, and thought Welcome was okay. However I absolutely hated Blue Sky Research. I havent listened to the new one yet in fear that it sounds like Blue Sky Reseach.

DETH ROK!!!!

agilehorse
10/26/2008
05:34PM
barf