Test Your Reflex preview

Test Your Reflex
Abbey Pub, Chicago
Saturday, May 5, 2007

Test Your Reflex are a group of five dudes from California between the ages of 19 and 21 who already have a record deal with RCA! Life must be sweet, huh? You sure as hell wouldn’t know it by hearing them.

Sometimes when listening to Test Your Relex’s debut, The Burning Hour, you wish Avril Lavigne would suddenly pop up on a track. Maybe her and TYR frontman Ryan Levine could duet on “Girlfriend” or “Sk8er Boi” or something. Normally we would rather have our nose hairs trimmed with garden shears than listen to either of those tunes, but at least it would prove Levine, pianist Andrew Ampaya, bassist Augustin Sanchez, drummer Sal Cortez, and guitarist R.C. are living, breathing, rambunctious, occasionally obnoxious teenagers/young adults, because as it stands they sound twice as old, twice as grumpy, twice as jaded, and twice as bored as any 20-year olds should. Maturity can be an admirable attribute in budding rockers, but it can be discouraging. Burning Hour‘s dance rock is strikingly developed for a group as young as TYR, but what it lacks among its perfectly pitched vocals, infinite layers of guitar, and sweeping keys, are any signs of spontaneity or spunk.

C’mon guys: Get drunk, steal a pack of your dad’s smokes, and listen to The Replacements’ Let It Be. Chill fellas. Sometimes it’s O.K., and expected, to just be dumb-ass kids.

Test Your Reflex, along with Night Kills The Day, open for Electric Six.

– Trevor Fisher

Click here for streaming samples of The Burning Hour.

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly