Division Day : Visitation :: Review

Santa Cruz’s Division Day is a band that offers up a gauzy post rock feel on their sophomore effort “Visitation.”   The gauziness and extraneous production lays heavy on the album and the songs feel somewhat leaden because of it. The production is analogous to having a great camera with a large glop of mayonnaise on the lens.  The majority of the songs on “Visitation” rarely rise above the level of mid-tempo rockers that only cause a sleepy feeling for the listener.

With that being said, I didn’t feel that the album was a total abomination; you just have to be in the mood for it otherwise it turns into pleasant background noise.  The album is cohesive and is reminiscent of Cave In and Failure at times.  What stood out for me were the last two tracks on the album, “My Prisoner” and “Black Crow” two songs that seemed to contain the strongest songwriting and melodies of the lot.  Other than that, if I could best sum up this review with a visual I would consider “Visitation” to be the aural equivalent of a shrug of the shoulders followed by me saying, “I dunno, it’s ok, I guess.”

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