The faithful-yet-beefed-up rendition of
Material Issue's "Everything" that leads off
Stereo Fuse's eponymous debut and, with an acoustic bonus version tacked onto the end, finishes it as well, isn't the track that defines the Dallas troupe. This is good considering how many new bands around the turn of the century seemed to be unable to escape a cover hit (Orgy,
Alien Ant Farm), though the cuts do happen to typify everything else about the timeframe: "Super Hero" is
3 Doors Down rock meets the nu-metal ethos, "Breathe" offers a
Stone Temple Pilots riff with vocals that sound like
Rob Thomas of
Matchbox Twenty fame singing one of the most infectious choruses you're likely to find, and "Heaven Inside You" is everything good and bad about '80s power ballads -- you can see the lighters lighting up the arena -- framed in a more modern epoch. The rest of the disc is filler that fails to bring out more than vehement ennui; however, having three cuts make the cut -- with none of them being the radio cover tune and each of them offering something slightly different -- is a better start than most of
Stereo Fuse's brethren. ~ Brian O'Neill