This self-titled album is there first full length on Takeover and Embrace Your Hooks is the EP that preceded it. In essence, their sound is comparable to the other bands who originate from the region. They pay a lot of attention to melody which gives their record a poppy feel, and on top of that their vocalist's tone has a strong resemblance to Jordan Pundik of New Found Glory (also from the area), which definitely factors in when lumping this band in with others like it.

Don't let their horrible name fool you, this is a really unique and talented group. What makes this band appreciable and similar to the more successful ones that I've mentioned is that many of their songs have a surprisingly strong and well-constructed melodic element to them, which really makes me wonder why this band isn't more popular. Songs like "Emotion Sensor" and "Carry Love" have choruses that will stay in your head as easily as anything you might hear on a modern rock radio station. In terms of melody, this band stands out far above countless mediocre bands with similar styles. This is what originally attracted me to this band along with the drumming which gets relatively aggressive on a few tracks. It provides a nice element of technicality to the group.

However, technicality can be a double edged sword for this band. While their songs often times contain some inventive guitar fills and complex chords which do keep their sound from becoming monotonous, they also are eager to experiment with uncommon instrumentation and things of the sort. On faster tracks like "Always" and "I Gurantee," the band opted to use acoustic guitars as opposed to electric ones, presumably just to be different. To me the price of the difference is a song that sounds feeble and oddly devoid of an essential quality. Many other songs are punctuated mainly with acoustic guitars, but also a synthesizer and even some horns on one song. I applaud the band's ambition to try and dispel redundancy that they might have encountered without all the miscellaneous sounds thrown in there, but when you listen to the whole catalog, it almost backfires and leaves the listener thinking saying "enough is enough, just play it normally."

I seem to recall reading somewhere that HeyMike! is a Christian band, which could be possible because to my knowledge, their songs don't have any swearing or real negative contexts. On the other hand, none of their songs are evangelical in any way. Regardless, this isn't a band that's shoving its thoughts and beliefs down the throats of its listeners so I couldn't care less what they believe. Topically, their lyrics are ambiguous and not what I would describe as revolutionary, but they allow the listener to contemplate the messages of the songs or apply their own meanings.

The EP Embrace Your Hooks is more bang for you buck (only $5 if you buy all the songs). These tracks all demonstrate the best qualities of the band and will leave you very satisfied. In what I think was a poor choice, the band (or label) decided not to include any of the aforementioned songs on the full length album, which is peppered with songs of varying quality. What they should of done was made another EP of the best tracks from the most recent session and then paired the two groups into one debut full length later on. Nevertheless, iTunes enables us to pick and choose which songs we want so this isn't really a problem anymore. If you want to buy the CD's, you can get used copies for under 50 cents at amazon.com. This band displays a lot of talent and musical proficiency, and there next release will hopefully bring something new to the table as they've done in the past.

Key tracks: This Bag is Not a Toy, Emotion Sensor, One Truth Said, Carry Love