Review: Night Argent's "The Fear" EP

Night Argent's newest EP, "The Fear", starts off with a thumping beat and a feeling of the epic that is perfectly crafted to be paired with film. This is 21st century soundtrack music at its most banal. The first track, "Mannequin," could fittingly be paired with any blockbuster movie trailer—everything about their sound is melodic, put-together, produced, and slick, just like most of the fare that comes out of Hollywood.

Night Argent is music made by people who are making music designed to be popular. 

There is nothing to fear in "The Fear", except perhaps boredom. Proficient musicians all, these sounds are relatively well done pieces of pop/rock, but there is nothing memorable about any of the tracks.

One can listen to "The Fear" as one listens to background music at a shopping mall—it makes little difference whether you pay any attention, as the band does not have anything unique to say either musically or lyrically.

There are some catchy hooks laden throughout the EP, most noticeably in the title track, "The Fear," itself, but none of them render the EP worthy of the twenty-some minutes it takes to listen to the whole thing.

With cliché-laden lyrics and the type of simple-minded pining that one might find from an amateur poet, "The Fear" might attract the type of mindless listeners that would likely be Night Argent's perfect target demographic, and since there are apparently tens of millions of them ready to queue up whatever is new and shiny, perhaps that will work for them. More mature listeners, however, will likely find little of note here.