There was a time when the underground’s anger, when tempered against clean guitars, was fairly revolutionary. Those days are far behind us, however, as every other indie band, as well as just about every emo outfit in existence, has thrown out the fuzz pedal in favor of the slightly out-of-focus clean guitar sound.

That’s the pickle We Talked About Murder finds itself in on this EP. While the band’s songwriting probably hadn’t been run into the ground when the band formed in the excitement of the emo boom, by the time it was laid down in the studio and put out to the record buying public, the thrill of a new sound had been hijacked by an almost unstoppable avalanche of similarly sounding bands.

It’s not fair to hold We Talked About Murder accountable for the lag between inspiration and the production of a recording, but unjust as it is, it’s the reality this EP has to deal with. Though the band’s six songs never falter, they also don’t show enough life to make it’s post-hardcore sound anything more than a cliché. Whether bemoaning a lost love to the tune of slightly discordant guitars ("Leann") or cutting rickety sound scapes that play up dynamic start-stops ("Rolling Fleas"), We Talked About Murder pulls out all the emo tricks. They unfortunately, however, never give listeners any reason to tune into their sound rather than the 3,000 other bands just like it.

The root of this problem, aside from the rampant over popularity of the style, is the band’s position squarely between the pop-soaked light sound and hard-hitting emocore. It’s a place that could give the band the balance to appease both camps, though We Talked About Murder simply waffles between extremes. Its rocking sections don’t blast with the fury needed to make them work, and likewise, the tender times can’t cast off enough of the tough guy image to work.

For as narrow of a musical style post-hardcore is, any bands now wanting to walk that path are going to need to find a heck of an angle to work it. Overcrowding even gets to the best of them, and second-tier bands like We Talked About Murder, as shown on this EP, are too likely to get trampled in the crowd.