Dream Police
Hypnotized
Release Date: Nov 11, 2014
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock, New Wave/Post-Punk Revival, Noise Pop, Noise-Rock
Record label: Sacred Bones
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Album Review: Hypnotized by Dream Police
Very Good, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 4.5/5
As members of New York band The Men, Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi make loud, rootsy punk. The debut album from their Dream Police side project explores psych-rock and makes for a heady departure. The title track recalls Spaceman 3, executing simple rhythms and spoken mantras alongside a glut of disorientating guitar effects, but spacious production ensures that it never becomes a mere drone.
Based on rating 8/10
Sometimes a band produces their most innovative music by doing something simple really well. That's the case with Dream Police, whose Hypnotized is a template for perfectly executed post-punk minimalism. The side project of Nick Chiericozzi and Mark Perro of Brooklyn-based punk band the Men, Dream Police take an expert background in far noisier music and strip it down to its bones, offering something that is simultaneously intense and easy on the ears.The album's opening track, "Hypnotized," starts with heavily distorted tremolo guitar and analogue keyboards, creating tension that doesn't explode later in the song but is released gradually across the next 40 minutes.
Based on rating 6.2/10
Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi are probably the last guys on Earth who need a side project. Not only has the band they co-founded, the Men, maintained a prolific rate of production (with five albums and two EPs in the past five years), they’ve been able to bend its sound to satisfy their every passing whim, be it loogie-hocking scum-punk, wood-cabin country rock, atomic psychedelia, or old-school '80s indie. And yet, they’re not ones to spend their days off between tours getting caught up on "The Walking Dead".
Based on rating 6/10
Despite a band name that could have ended up as a subtitle in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, the new project from Mark Perro and Nick Chiericozzi (both also from rock outfit, the Men) doesn’t drift by ethereally. Hypnotized is an album of flesh-and-blood sounds, mostly, and often prefers to stomp than it does to drift. Sure, there’s enough gauze to justify the band’s name, but this is less about hazy edges than it is about setting new parameters for their sound.
Based on rating C
Formed on tour in 2010, Dream Police is the side project of The Men’s Nick Chiericozzi and Mark Perro. Together, the duo have used the project to indulge every whim that doesn’t work with their main band. Following an extensive 2013 tour in support of Open Your Heart, the two finally sat down to jam out ideas and make a record. Six months later, the duo’s first album, Hypnotized, was finished.
'Hypnotized'
is available now