Royden – Best Friends Our Worst Enemies / 2006 Hopeless / 5 Tracks / http://www.roydenstork.com / http://www.hopelessrecords.com / Reviewed 07 April 2006

“Ghosthouse 1922” starts off Royden’s EP and there is an immediate AFI sound to the band that the band does not allow to completely dominate. The stop-start of the guitar work during this track is a mite annoying, but the back and forth of the guitars on “Ghosthouse 1922” is something that is good enough to make up for any prior annoyance. This is like a more punky version of all of the emocore acts out on the market. “Ghosthouse 1922” is a track that has a catchy sound to it but ultimately does not feel primed for radio time; when tied into an EP or an LP individuals can see the beauty of the track.

Taken out of its context, the track suffers slightly. The guitar/vocal dynamic during “Murder of an Albatross” substantially improves Royden’s stocks in the eyes of all listening in. The song stands out in a much more natural way than “Ghosthouse 1922”. In a sense, why this track will succeed in a radio/video context is due to the Fall Out Boy / The Killers sound of the track. The one thing that can be said without doubt about Royden is that each song on “Best Friends Our Worst Enemies” shows a distinctly different style of the band. While the stop-start nature of “Ghosthouse 1922” is present again in “Made in Lies”, thee is a fury that puts the band into overdrive that is not matched anywhere else on this disc.

The metal-like guitars present on this track are almost of the level of any of the memorable eighties acts or even (for those youngest individuals) like those in Sum 41’s “Pain For Pleasure”. “Carabella” is perhaps the most intricate of the tracks on “Best Friends Our Worst Enemies”. Also the band’s quietest songs, there is a sense throughout all of the “quiet” section that the band is really going to kick things up a notch. The chaos present in the track is another nice, new innovation for the band; what Royden can do less than five minutes matches what acts can do in an entire forty-minute album. Finishing off the disc with “Dolittle Raids”, Royden shows that they are the most different thing that Hopeless could conceive of for 2006; here’s to hoping that this multi-faceted group can come up with a full-length that is as interesting as “Best Friends Our Worst Enemies”.

Top Track: Dolittle Raids

Rating: 6.8/10

[JMcQ]