I know this is the very first Excursion release, so I'm going to try to cut them some slack. The sound is terrible, they chose a terrible font for the liner notes and back cover, and its hard to tell what speed to play this record at (33 it turns out). The songs could be decent but the engineering gets in the way and after 25+ years of listening to music, there are better examples of the hooks on this release.

It starts slow. Too slow. It is almost a chugga chugga hardcore attempt (hey, it is Excursion, after all), but it lacks the low end for such an adventure. I don't know what it was about the 90's but songs about being alone in your room were quite popular. Maybe the invention of the internet solved that problem. This song about being alone in your room tries to be positive about the whole ordeal with the repeated "I'm feeling alright" line in the chorus. The problem is that the vocal effect on that line is a lot like the modern day uptalk and just as annoying. There is some redemption in a great guitar melody (despite terrible sound) and a solid outro, but you have to be patient to get to it.

Side B has an even more atrocious guitar sound. Another Lie is a basically forgettable song. A breathy staccato vocal over a peppy guitar melody is a formula that falls flat for me. Second Nature aims for redemption but the second verse gets even less awesome with talk-singing over some wicked high guitar noodling. The end of the song finally hints at the later greatness of 10:07 with a good repetitive "You can't get me down" sung line in counterpoint to a defiant machine-gun "To win or lose it does not matter I will keep my soul until I shatter."

There are some good moments here, but this is definitely not their best release and is hard to look at or listen to.

If you like this review, you can buy me a coffee.