A Hero From A Thousand Paces - Mistakes

A Hero From A Thousand Paces - Mistakes
Release Date - April 3rd, 2007
Label - 1x1 Music

In this music scene, there is a sort of image continuum that bands fall along. There are some bands that are entirely music driven, with no focus on image. There are some bands that try to balance both. And there are some bands that are entirely image based and their music is secondary. A Hero From A Thousand Paces fall firmly in that third category.

This band from New Jersey is made up of former members of The Pennyroyals and Riding Bikes, but have lost any vestiges of punk from those old bands. Instead, they wear exclusively red, black, and white, along with a lot of makeup and hair gel. On their slick myspace page, the music seems the be merely a vehicle for promotion of the band, rather than the other way around.

As for Mistakes, it starts off with what sounds like a pretty promising guitar riff. That is, until the rather weak vocals of Mark Fray set in, forcibly bringing to mind bands like Hawthorne Heights. The next three songs all feature the exact same guitar tones and and uncreative, sex-driven lyrics:

System overload / surge malfunction / Aching for your love / Starved and malnourished / We've been tarnished with a kiss / There goes our precious innocence

There aren't any discernible hooks anywhere, and Fray takes on a similar cadence for every verse. He occasionally ventures into falsetto, where his voice becomes even less powerful than it already was. "Semantics" is Hero's attempt at a ballad, but Fray still delivers his lines exactly the same way as in previous songs, only this time with the aid of even higher pitched background vocals. He simply sounds bored all the time. Fray does manage to belt it out a little more in "A Hand Written Apology," but the trite lyrics of I'm sorry / I never meant to hurt you don't keep your interest.

"Close Your Eyes" starts out with an acoustic guitar, a sound much more fitted to the vocals. However, the band rushes back to their electric guitars just as the song is starting to sound good. If they hadn't followed their formula, they would have has a sweet song on their hands.

A Hero From A Thousand Paces is clearly trying to capitalize on the subset of kids who are into music to be seen, not to see. By the looks of their website, they've got dozens of these kids under their net. However, as soon as those kids find a prettier boy in eyeliner, Hero will find themselves without a fanbase and will have to latch onto the next hot trend.

Track Listing
01. Bold And The Beautiful
02. With Closed Fists
03. The Aftermath
04. Semantics
05. Doctor Doctor
06. She'll Pay For Me In Singles
07. It's Not Over
08. A Hand Written Apology
09. Philadelphia
10. Close Your Eyes
11. The Stained Slide Show
12. A Good Thing

* - standout tracks

For Fans Of - Hawthorne Heights, 30 Seconds To Mars, Silverstein

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