Let's Build Something to Break

After Midnight Project's debut offering of melodic, muscled, hard rock is hardly revolutionary, but it is better than it needs to be, boasting 11 tracks that find some sort of neutral territory between calm passion and grungy, open-armed melodrama. Let's Build Something to Break is a rhythmic record, one in which guitar solos aren't nearly as important as the interlocked thud of drums and bass. Flashes of piano and electronics are added to the mix, and "Gone Too Long" even flirts with symphonic accompaniment. Even so, this is a fairly lean album, polished to a spit-shine by John Feldmann — Goldfinger frontman and accomplished producer for the likes of Good Charlotte, the Used, and Atreyu — and largely focused on beefy, commercial would-be singles. Jason Evigan is an appropriate frontman for such music, delivering lines like "I'm gonna throw my fist in the air and erase you from my memory!" with a voice that alternates between theatrical grit, growls, and falsetto. This has all been done before, of course, but it's still comforting to hear a band do it fairly well.