Album Review: The Big Deep by The Sleeping

Worthy of some overdue mainstream attention. Maybe it’s because they emerged when the whole Long Island post-hardcore scene had already chosen its posterboys, but The Sleeping have often been unfairly overlooked. With ‘The Big Deep’ they’ve taken a much more straightforward approach to things than ever before and ended up with a collection of solid, accessible rock songs.

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Review Summary: Both progressive & poppy, this is a sincere & deceptively catchy rock LP.It can be a fine line between pleasure and pain… Love and hate… Genius and madness. In the music industry; it can be a fine line between striking it big and being just another one of the thousands of run-of-the-mill artists plying their trade worldwide. One hit single can be all that it takes to transform also-rans into career-long bankable sellers.

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Long Island, New York’s the Sleeping incorporate a vast array of influences and borrowed sounds on their fourth album, The Big Deep. There’s a little bit of the Cure’s Robert Smith in vocalist Doug Robinson’s delivery on “Oh, Gloria,” but they toss in cello and rumbling drums for bonus drama. Near-metallic guitar distortion kicks off “Dark Days,” but the weirdly stifled drumming and emo-ish vocals, balanced atop a fuzzed-out bassline, make the anger feel unearned and not quite convincing.

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