It would be easy to misconstrue the title of
Killing Time as a defeated admission from a tired band whose members were just going through the motions, putting out record after record because that’s what bands are supposed to do. For
Bayside, however, that couldn’t be less true. Working with producer
Gil Norton, who worked on monumental albums like
the Pixies’ Doolittle and
Foo Fighters’
The Colour and the Shape, the band has made what might be its most fully realized album to date. The band sounds as fresh and vibrant as ever on tracks like “The New Flesh,” reaffirming for fans that
Bayside have held firmly onto their pop sensibility and vigor, and that they can still combine them as well as anyone in the emo/post-hardcore game. This comes through brilliantly on “Mona Lisa,” where the band evokes the polished pop heaviness of early-model
Weezer, deftly shifting keys to make the song feel like it’s constantly evolving without losing any of its infectiousness along the way. Given the way
Bayside have incorporated all of the lessons learned from their other albums, it almost feels like the album’s title refers to all of the time spent up until this recording, painting a picture of a band that’s been spinning its wheels trying out this and that before really bringing it all together into one polished record. If you're a fan who may have been disappointed after the release of 2008’s
Shudder, this is the album you’ve been waiting for. ~ Gregory Heaney