Struggle + Sleep

On the debut full-length CD Struggle + Sleep, the rock quintet Life on Repeat sounds like two bands from two different styles that have been soldered together. The rhythm section of bassist Devon Voisine and drummer David Walker seems to be under the impression that Life on Repeat is a heavy metal group. Walker frequently pummels his double-bass drum kit, with Voisine thundering along in familiar metal patterns. But singer Patrick Purves and guitarists Andrew Baylis and Zach King seem to think that Life on Repeat is a pop-punk outfit on the order of, say, Jimmy Eat World. The guitars ring in a much more melodic fashion, and Purves shout-sings in his adenoidal tenor energetically. The tension between the top and the bottom of the band's sound is what makes its music interesting. Walker in particular clearly comes from the Buddy Rich/Keith Moon drumming philosophy that says mere timekeeping is not what a drummer is meant to do; he is meant to stand out and call attention to himself at every opportunity. And so Walker does, even in the album's softest ballad, "Without You Here," in which Purves, who has been singing of the hopes and frustrations of love in the face of geographic separation and temptations to infidelity, grows most sincere, to the point of proposing: "Would it be so cliché if you took my last name /‘Cause as I get older, still nothing feels colder/Than winter without you here." Walker is having none of that, and he suddenly appears with rapid-fire beats to erase any sentimentality. And so Life on Repeat remains poised between power and purpose, its energy likely to draw fans of hard rock as well as pop-punk, or at least that seems to be the idea.