Trapt proves once again how the face of rock has changed into a glum archetype of successful predecessors with their recently released second album, "Someone in Control."
Their sophomore collection is a typical modern rock album with no personality of its own. The band instead uses facets of other rock bands to try and appeal to a similar crowd. The band caters to the typical anti-social, "against the grain" crowd of today's youth. Their sound is quite similar to that Papa Roach, Staind, and Disturbed.
Trapt's music contains nothing innovative in terms of melody, changeups or lyrics. Their style is prototypical whining about everyday social struggles. Song titles like "Victim," "Lost Realist," and "Bleed Like Me" sound as if they are entries in an angst-ridden teenager's diary.
The band uses a simple formula devised by nameless corporate heads in an effort to appeal to as many confused and emotion-addled teens as possible. The lead singer Chris Brown gripes about topics such as relationship troubles, independence and miscommunication.
"You always feel so alone/ the real you is never shown/ whose influence?/ Whose influence are you under?/ Now so much pressure to fit in/ you never know when to begin/ Whose influence?/ Whose influence are you under?" he sings in "Influence."
Although much of the music is filled with power chords and predictably lame changeups, the riffs are catchy. It is this fact that probably helped Trapt make it into mainstream along with their quasi-edgy marketable image.
The liner notes in the album are another cruel joke that corporate music producers are literally shoving down teens' throats. They contain dark, decadent pictures of churches, classrooms and of course, the band looking "hardcore."
Conglomerates like Warner Brothers have found a way to make money off of anti-social introverts as the Gap has made money off of "preppies."
Sad, very sad.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
