Birds of Pray

Reviewed by:
David Peisner

Live were ahead of their time. They were making slick, dull, derivative modern rock back before MTV and rock radio were filled with hordes of faceless purveyors of the same pap. (Creed, for one, swiped so many of their moves that a lawsuit might be in order.) Birds of Pray marks time in their continued descent into well-deserved irrelevance. By no means horrible, the album, with its surging guitar riffs, crafted choruses, and pristine production, would be virtually indistinguishable from whatever is currently playing on your local modern-rock station, were it not for the pompous, self-righteous preening of frontman Ed Kowalczyk. You can’t help but admire a guy who is so convinced he’s got something important to say that he sings hopelessly earnest, immeasurably dopey lines like “Bring the people together/For the sake of these children we leave behind” (from “Bring the People Together”) as if he were delivering the Emancipation Proclamation. Such moments are fleetingly amusing but hardly enough to sustain interest over the course of the record.

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