Deciding Tonight - The Delusionist CD Review

I’m sure a good amount of you went to check out the Warped Tour this summer, or plan to when it gets to your city. If not, maybe you picked up the Warped Tour 2006 compilation CD, which is a good mix of what you’ll find attending the Warped Tour, as well as also giving you a good rundown of what is currently popular in the “punk scene”. Now if you could distill down all of the bands on the Warped Tour to their common, most base elements, you’d no doubt come up with a band that sounds strikingly similar to Deciding Tonight.

Sounding very similar to a blend of Scary Kids Scaring Kids, Emery, and Just Surrender, The Delusionist runs the gamut of emo-core clichés. It’s hard to find much that is original within the 11 tracks that comprise this effort, but that’s not to say there aren’t some decent songs. “When It Was a Game” has a great mix of sing-a-long choruses, peppy tempos, and keyboard overtones to supplement the very standard song structure holding it down. Another above average song is “The Science of Dowsing”, which sports a more classic rock oriented feel and a quick pace that keeps the song fresh for the full three minutes of its existence.

For every good song, however, there are definitely some misfires. “The Orensburg Reception” sports some gratuitously unneeded screams that sound way out of place, along with some opening guitar tones that are just outright painful. “The Downside of Weightlessness” has one of the cheesiest keyboard loops to be put to tape since, well, the last edition of your local grocery store’s $0.99 Halloween sound effects gimmick CD. And then there’s the rest of the disc which feels, simply put, non-threatening. The songs are so standard and so safe that you could interchange this band with about 60% of the bands in today’s popular emo / punk / screamo scene.

Average is the name of the game when it comes to listening to Deciding Tonight. You’re not going to get anything above and beyond what’s currently out there, but The Delusionist also isn’t completely cringe worthy, like some recent releases (cough* CuteIsWhatWeAimFor *cough). It’s up to you to gauge how sick you are of the current screamo scene, and by implication, Deciding Tonight.