It has to be nearly a year since I received a promo that made me feel, from the first notes and onwards, that I was staring into a gaping abyss of mediocrity and the mediocrity was, if not staring, then at least blasting vacuum-packed hard rock at me. That timer must once again be reset in the face of the Italy's Several Union and their second album, Awake From The Game.

The band’s relatively safe combination of concrete-laden walls of guitars and cotton candy-melodies should be familiar to anyone located within hearing of a popular rock radio station within the past 15 or so years. As far as mental images go, I’m thinking of Stone Sour with far less hooks or Nickelback with a Southern European accent.

The ultrasheen-production job is quality work and certainly fits the bill but combined with material like this, I can’t find any edges to spice things up. Awake and One By One contain a few niftier growls from the guitars, but beyond that, everything just leaps into one ear and out the other without leaving a mark.

Now, all that would entail mediocrity and just a whole lotta “meh”. As you can see the score and label that come with this review don’t reflect that sentiment. For the less polite tags, we can thank the cover tune of the bunch, an absolutely horrendous take on Aerosmith’s Dream On. Tyler, Perry and Co. have never been a huge band for me but that’s a great song and credit to Several Union that they have attempted to make their version sound notably different. But when their chosen methods for doing that have been to make the flow of the song awfully stiff and spice the choruses on occasion with “harsh” grunts, it simply does not work. To put it diplomatically, I would have to say this is the worst cover tune I have encountered in years.

In terms of the aforementioned flow, it is also alarming how devoid of groove this record seems to be. The instrumental prowess, the singing, other technical aspects aren’t bad but simply bland, through and through. Run of the mill modern radio rock is one thing, but it’s a pretty safe bet that fans of said genre can find much higher quality goods of the kind elsewhere.