ALBUM REVIEW: More To Life – Crushed By Waves

North West quartet CRUSHED BY WAVES have been rising up the ranks of the music industry ever since the release of their debut single Ceiling in 2020. With their blend of melodic verses, anthemic choruses and breakdowns, the band have been building up a fanbase, with several sold-out shows in their hometown of Manchester and multiple festival appearances in 2023. Now, 2024 marks the year that CRUSHED BY WAVES take the world by storm with the release of their debut album More To Life.

Across ten songs, the band take the listener on a journey. From the start of the electronic rock of opening track of Nothing Left to the synth rock of Too Much Too Fast, the album constantly plays around with the concept of genre; whether it is the post-hardcore song Dangerous, the synth rock of You Know, or the heavy rock of Won’t Get Out Alive, More To Life shows that CRUSHED BY WAVES are not a band to be kept in one box.

Though you could say they play it relatively safe by sticking within the broad genres of rock and electronica, there are some other genres thrown in throughout. For example, on the title track, they mostly stick to the synth-rock sound, but throw in some metal screams for good measure. This sets the stage nicely for Faces, which delves into post-hardcore. By adding a couple of tracks like this, the band hint at what they can do on future albums, but it also doesn’t come out of nowhere as there is a build towards it in the previous songs.

More To Life is a fast-paced record too. Whilst there are some songs in the latter half of the album that do merge into each other, such as the eighth song Lies, which struggles to differentiate its synth-metal from the aforementioned title track and Faces, the rest of the album makes for a fantastic debut.

Overall, whilst More To Life isn’t perfect, it has a cohesive sound, and the addition of post-hardcore elements and songs helps liven things up a bit and makes sure that the electronic rock style does not get stale. Whilst a couple of the songs do end up sounding a bit similar towards the end of the album, this is still CRUSHED BY WAVES‘ debut. They have plenty of time to work on their music, but either way this is a very good start.

Rating: 8/10

More To Life is set for release on March 22nd via self-release.

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