I guess if I'm going to be blunt about it, I'd say "Chasing the Dream" has a lot of value on the surface but not the essential songwriting virtues to hold up the flash and force. Skull Fist's music just doesn't stay fresh. It was hard not to enjoy this at first-the blazing riffs and the electric shredding drove me mad. By the tenth spin I felt like I had absorbed everything "Chasing the Dream" could offer eight listens ago, and although some of the tunes are still fun, most of them start and end unremarkably. Fast riffs, huge choruses, and enough guitar solos to make the population of Swaziland bang their heads are all fine in my book, but these things are done in a manner that seems overtly hammy and shallow. The songs blend together, the rhythm section is ordinary, and it sounds big for the sake of being big.

Maybe I'd feel differently if the vocals were somewhat passible; they are the proverbial anvil that causes the whole ship to capsize, so to speak (not to imply "Chasing the Dream" would have been a flaw-free utopia had they been superior). The vocals are a spiritual amplification of the over-the-top, flashy persona of the music; they are overloaded with effects and studio magic, rendered synthetic to a point where there are tiffs and only tiffs upon each falsetto, each yell and scream. The dude's voice is noticeably charismatic and fiery, and it makes me wonder why Skull Fist didn't unplug the computerized trickery and just go the route of the raw. Imagining "Chasing the Dream" with actual explosions instead of engineered studio bangs makes my heart cry.