Bands should really resist giving themselves acronyms (B.I.T.E.) that lend themselves so easily to snarky reviews. It’s so hard for critics to resist using that acronym to ream the band out with if they’re even the slightest bit bad.
I will resist using it, however. New Jersey’s B.I.T.E. (I promise, they use it constantly in their liner notes and press kit) call themselves “Mud-Rock” but they sound more like what I call “Mad-at-Your-Dad-Rock.” Radio-friendly, platinum-selling angst-metal with what comedian David Cross calls “tenth-grade suburban white-girl lyrics.” This band seems to be the intersection between the Linkin Parks of the world and the hardcore scene, with the occasional flavor of Nirvana. The vocals sound like someone I’ve heard before, but I can’t put a name on everything I’ve heard on Modern Rock Radio.
Perhaps calling them tenth-grade suburban white girl lyrics isn’t fair—I was a tenth grade suburban white girl once, and I never put out an album of in-your-face music. To be fair, it’s not bad. It’s just not really good, either. It’s probably better live, though the video included on the disc gives snatches of self-indulgent performance shots that don’t indicate a ton of live chemistry either.
The side note on the CD says “Today is tomorrow’s yesterday.” This faux-deep sentiment pretty much sums it up: tomorrow, there will be another band very similar to this one, trying to combine genres that were derivative of one another, and flirting with commercial sounds.
