Trapt - Someone In Control / 2005 Warner Bros / 11 Tracks / http://www.trapt.com / http://www.warnerbros.com / Reviewed 09 September 2005

Everybody remembers who Trapt is, and to be honest, I had them slated for a destiny of clips from their first album being played on a “one-hit wonder” show. However, the radio-friendly opening to “Someone In Control” (Disconnected) shows that this band is not going to bow out any time soon. There seems to be a little more of a shift toward the Korn/Linkin Park brand of rock (rather than the other major influence to many of these acts, Disturbed). The production is immaculate as expected; each member of the band is given an equal shot on “Someone In Control to shine.

While many of the bands that currently get airtime on the Clearchannel-dominated hard rock radio stations tend to morph into one another, Trapt has a distinct spontaneity to their music that allow the band to start off slow and move into a high-octane rock track in the space of a few seconds. This is illustrated in the ambitious “Victim”, while “Stand Up” seems almost to erase all of the gains found by the band up to that point. “Stand Up” seems cut from the same cloth as hundreds of other tracks by bands as forgettable as Ditchwater, all the way up to the impressive Bobaflex. This spectre of complacency seems to be the one largest fault to be found with the “new-rock” genre; while a band like Trapt can come through with hit after hit, there seems to be these missteps ever-present to hamstring later efforts by the band. “Lost Realist” really seems to tap a market in its acoustic-sounding arrangements and emotive (some would even go as far as to say “emo” sound of the ) vocals.

The infusion of the track with Trapt’s own twist on the genre really makes the track deserving of a fame that only something like “The Reason” (by Hoobastank) was able to achieve in the last few years. Instead of being a saccharine, melodramatic track, listeners can actually hear a sadness and sorrow that they could conceivably feel in their own life, and Trapt is validated as a serious, sincere act by the track’s end. Trapt, on nearly all of their eleven cuts on “Someone In Control” have made a hard-hitting and fun disc that will no doubtedly be memorized by a nation of fans and sung loud and proud the next time the band hits the road. “Someone In Control” can rightfully be called “Some Band In Control”.

Top Tracks: Lost Realist, Skin Deep

Rating: 6.6/10