Now I’ll start off by saying that this album is one of my most anticipated albums of 2005 because even though Dopamine are a band that not many people will know of, last year I fell in love with Dopamine and their EP ‘A Lesson In Dying’. The Epic songs, the amazing riffs, catchy lyrics and the beautiful vocals all combine to make Dopamine a force to be reckoned with. However it still remained to be seen if Dopamine could produce a top quality full length debut album in the form of ‘Auditioning My Escape Plan’

The first song on the album is ‘Destroy Something Beautiful’ which is the only song on the album which appeared on the last EP. It is a great song and sounds even better than it did on the EP, the production has been beefed up which leads to the song sounding a lot sharper and comes across even heavier than before. So the album starts of well and gets even better with ‘Larvso’ & ‘Six Miles South Of Home’. ‘Larvso’ is an instantly catchy number and ‘Six Miles South Of Home’ sounds amazing throughout, it combines thumping drums, a giant guitar riff and great lyrics such as “Say what you will, its never going to be like it was before”, this all adds to produce one of the best songs on this album. The rock doesn’t stop there as ‘Save Yourself’ is another great song with a great riff and some impressive drumming while ‘Lifeline Exercise No.1’ starts off slow but builds into a blaze of fury with a larger than life guitar riff which goes into an amazing chorus with the lyrics “I’m sinking in, I’m losing myself and your to blame for this” this is a simply jaw droppingly good song.

Things are temporarily slowed down a bit with ‘This January’ which is a beautiful song which even has the addition of a Cello being used which really adds to the feel of the song. Things pick up again with ‘United By Fear’ which is a real feel good track that just makes me think of the summer and is another one of my favourite tracks on the album. Next up is ‘Failing Amber’ which yet again has a great riff and is so catchy followed by the melodic ‘Il Faut Tuer Les Passions’ which has some great drumming and some more catchy lyrics “All I ever wanted was the cliché of a happy ending”. Then there’s the amazing ’30 Seconds’ which just has everything, a great melody, an emotional chorus, chunky guitars and some more great drumming which all add up to produce another beautiful and breathtaking song. ‘You Don’t Know’ is one of the heavier songs on the album but at the same time is one of the weaker songs on the album because its not anything we haven’t heard before but even after saying that its still not a bad song at all. ‘#12’ is better and end the albums on a real high, it’s so melodic and a really beautiful chorus where Neil Starr sings “This is wonderful, everything seems perfect, for once” and in that line he isn’t far away from describing my thoughts on this album.

In ‘Auditioning My Escape Plan’, Dopamine has made the first truly great album of 2005. Now I’m not saying that all the songs are as amazing as ‘Six Miles South Of Home’ or ‘United By Fear’ but there isn’t one bad song on this album and that is a rare quality. Dopamine are an amazing band with a refreshing sound packed full of melody and emotional and they really have a sound of their own. At times you could compare them to their fellow Welshmen Funeral For A Friend or even Lostprophets but they still sound nothing like either. Another rare quality about their music is that they manage to portray the emotion in the songs without having a screaming part in every song like so many bands nowadays. Neil Starr can do it all through just singing and with the other guys behind him they have created an album that I can see myself still listening to regularly at the end of the summer. I really don’t know how much more praise I can give these guys, all I have left to say is – check them out, I seriously doubt you will be disappointed.

Dopamine’s ‘Auditioning My Escape Plan’ is Out Now through Golf Records. To find out more about Dopamine - Click Here