With Fragile Future, the platinum-selling Ohio rockers of Hawthorne Heights clearly had a lot of raw
material to draw from: It's their first album since guitarist-vocalist
Casey Calvert's accidental death and the band's lawsuit (since dropped)
against their own record label. It's somewhat disappointing, then, that
the disc's sound and content hew so closely to the standard
emo/screamo/hardcore formula. Despite the anthemic guitar crescendos and
well-calibrated choruses, there's little here lyrically or musically
that will strike anyone past driver's ed as trenchant or fresh. Nevertheless, the now quartet's apparent ode to Calvert, ''Four Become
One,'' is genuinely touching, given the context. C+
DOWNLOAD THIS: Listen to ''Rescue Me'' on the band's MySpace page
Add your comment
The rules: Keep it clean, and stay on the subject or we might delete your comment. If you see inappropriate language, e-mail us. An asterisk * indicates a required field.