Division (CD - 2008)

DIVISION, the follow up to 10 Years' hit debut, THE AUTUMN EFFECT, reflects the turbulence in the band, and its emotional aftereffects, during the period following their breakout success. Songs like the storming opener, "Actions and Motives," and the emo power ballad, "Dying Youth," obliquely address this turmoil, while the first single, "Beautiful," and the unexpected sitar-and-tabla inflected "Alabama" stretch the Tennessee band's reach to include sounds and emotions beyond those heard on the more straightforward THE AUTUMN EFFECT.

Knoxville, TN, alt-metal act 10 Years made their major-label debut with 2005's The Autumn Effect, an utterly ordinary effort much beholden to the likes of Tool and Staind, and the album nonetheless scored a big radio hit with the single "Wasteland." Reportedly recorded in a fractious intra-band environment (hence the title), Division sounds like the work of a band that carefully and thoroughly deconstructed its previous hit and attempted to replicate it several more times for the follow-up. Division is a smooth, radio-friendly record with the debut's aggressive tendencies almost entirely sanded off in favor of new producer Rick Parashar's glossy layers of instruments and vocals. Even potentially powerful quiet-to-loud rockers like "Russian Roulette" and "11 AM (Daydreamer)" feel over-manicured and far too polite, singer Jesse Hasek's vocals losing their emotive power in the overall listlessness. Even worse, hints that the bandmembers now consider themselves "artists" occasionally rear their ugly heads: the coda of "Picture Perfect (In Your Eyes)" is nearly as long as the body of the song itself, and even worse, it features a spoken word poem read by one of the album's female backing vocalists. (Simply that the album has female backing vocalists in the first place is a warning sign for this brand of alt-metal -- call it "November Rain" syndrome -- but really, a poem? Why not just call the guy from the Moody Blues? He can't be busy.) It may well have the intended effect of prolonging the band's chart life temporarily, but Division sounds if anything like the exact opposite of artistic maturation. ~ Stewart Mason

Knoxville, TN, alt-metal act 10 Years made their major-label debut with 2005's The Autumn Effect, an effort much beholden to the likes of Tool and Staind, and the album scored a big radio hit with the single "Wasteland." Reportedly recorded in a fractious intra-band environment (hence the title), Division sounds like the work of a band that carefully and thoroughly deconstructed its previous hit and attempted to replicate it several more times for the follow-up. Division is a smooth, radio-friendly record featuring new producer Rick Parashar's glossy layers of instruments and vocals. Occasional moments also suggest that the bandmembers now consider themselves "artists": the coda of "Picture Perfect (In Your Eyes)" is nearly as long as the body of the song itself, and features a spoken word poem read by one of the album's female backing vocalists. Division may well have the intended effect of prolonging the band's chart life, at least temporarily. ~ Stewart Mason minimize