Riverton Band Releases Debut Album

By Stephen Ditty

Heavy drums and an aggressive guitar are just two parts of the local band The After Autumn. They played at the Battle of the Bands, and released their first CD, “With Friends Like These I’d Rather be Enemies.” Lead vocalist and lead guitarist Alex Skousen, bassist Aidan Woodward, and drummer Jesus Sanchez make up the band.

Skousen said, “[The band formed] around last year, it wasn’t really official, we just got together one day.”

In “With Friends Like These I’d Rather Be Enemies,” there are six songs, and a drum intermission. On the first song, “Darling is an Overused Word,” the song has more of a standard rock song beat, with the lyrics covering the classic break-up story that somehow makes it into every band’s song list. After that, the rest of the songs take on more of an Indie-Punk style.

“Say Forgive,” their second song, takes on a much darker tone with a faster and harsh guitar and a fierce style of singing. This song sets the bar for the rest of the CD, with the rest of the songs closely following to what you hear in “Say Forgive.”

The next song, named “Freak”, has the most punk elements on the CD. The song has an extremely heavy guitar and bass that pound their way through the entire song, with Skousen almost screaming the anger-filled lyrics. After the brutality of “Freak”, The After Autumn decides to tone it down to a heavy version of pop-punk in the next song, “The Robot with No Heart”.

“Waking Up Asleep” picks up the pace with rising electric guitar chords that gets the listener’s attention on them, and keeps it there. The finale song, called “Hey Dream”, begins the song slowly, after which it picks up speed, slows down again, and speeds up for an enjoyable ending.

“With Friends Like These I’d Rather Be Enemies” is a good CD, even if it has a couple of quirks that come along with it. For example, in all of the songs the electric guitar’s sound covers up almost all of Skousen’s vocal work. He can still be heard, and his voice adds to the song, but listeners can’t tell what he’s saying. For people who don’t really care about lyrics and like how it sounds, this CD is a good tradeoff. Sound quality in the CD is average, but it isn’t surprising when The After Autumn used just a simple microphone to record. Occasionally, in the heavier parts of the song, the guitar will overwhelm the microphone, and cause a sound screech that could break the ear drum. The last thing that was disagreeable was how some songs sounded repetitive, either to another song in the album, or repeating an opening.

Overall, The After Autumn’s CD “With Friends like these I’d Rather be Enemies” is a good choice for those who enjoy darker styles of Indie and rock. If you can get past the amateur quality and style of the CD, you’ll find a diamond in the rough with The After Autumn’s vocal and instrumental talent.