Kiss or Kill

Album Review

The music on Endeverafter's Kiss or Kill is all over the place, which can be good or bad, depending on perspective. While ostensibly a blend of Sunset Strip hair metal and the blues-rock-tinged sounds of Silvertide, the hardcore roots of frontman Michael Grant become quite evident early on and grow more apparent throughout the album's 48 minutes. This isn't completely unexpected, but it does reveal that while Grant and his bandmates may be influenced by the likes of Mötley Crüe and Guns N' Roses, they most likely don't remember enough of the era to truly understand its spirit. Still, the generation that grew up with Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco in heavy rotation on their iPods will likely find Kiss or Kill to be a more rewarding experience, as many of the album's lyrics fall more in line with the emo punk-pop that dominated the 2000s. The album opens with two strong numbers, "I Wanna Be Your Man" and "Baby Baby Baby," that would appear to set the tone for a rollicking, debauched rocker. However, things take an abrupt turn with the next song, "Gotta Get Out," which sounds like a teen pop single — in other words, rather out of place. Kiss or Kill remains an uneven effort after that, with sincere attempts at pop-metal interspersed (and sometimes combined) with bleaker emo angst. It's an effort that quickly grows both confusing and tiresome; Endeverafter could easily be a strong contender in either genre, but not in both at the same time.