It's hard to imagine Nashville four-piece, DARK HOUND, ever headlining anything bigger than a local show on the strength of "Oceans", their latest EP. Consisting of five tracks of unadventurous metal, it's a very awkward listen and has a 'perpetual support band' air about it. If they were hoping it'd launch them down the road to international fame, they're going to be sorely disappointed. It has a few moments, but for the most part this is bland and forgettable.

It doesn't start too badly, to be fair. The opening "Thread" is their strongest song with some decent guitar work and a driving sense of urgency behind it, but these whispers of early potential go unfulfilled. The following "To Know End", with its uninspiring message about living for yourself, is the first misstep, but it's when they reach "Just As Blind" that DARK HOUND go from being unoriginal, to just plain awful.

This is a track cursed with some ill thought-out lyrics, which are made worse by the delivery. Singer ET BROWN has a voice with a nice M SHADOWS-esque snarl, but he's also prone to doing a high-pitched DEXTER HOLLAND impression, which gets annoying very quickly. Here, he screeches angst-ridden nonsense about how rubbish "everyone else" is alongside the sort of philosophical musings you'd find in a GCSE students diary while dull riffs churn endlessly behind him.

It never gets quite as bad as that again, but "Rearview Mirror" and "Oceans" don't exactly kick things up a notch either. There are a few moments of impressive musicianship that make you sit up and take notice, but then another high-pitched vocal line cuts through and ruin everything. It's a frustrating and cringe-inducing experience, lacking in any major hooks and just a bit flat and unremarkable. The fact it's impossible to find anything about their record label online doesn't inspire confidence either.<