February 17th, 2009 
James Shotwell
Band: The Sleeping
Album: What It Takes
Genre: Rock
Label: Victory
Track Listing:
1. You’ll Be A Corpse Before Your Time
2. Friday Night
3. Bomb The World
4. Shallow Lungs
5. Running Faster
6. Ripped Dress
7. Should Have Let Me Leave
8. He Only Sees Where He Walks
9. Refusive Relationship
10. Bad Religion
11. Anyone Night Stand
12. Deadbeast
Losing a key member will put stress on any band. For The Sleeping, the loss of guitarist Cameron was one that many fans feared would spell the end of the group all together, but as you can tell, that’s not the case. Victory’s The Sleeping have finally returned with an honestly much anticipated sequel to Questions and Answers entitled, What it Takes. Could it be about what it takes to move on? Perhaps, but one thing is for sure, they pulled out all the stops on this one.
Kicking off with the lead single [much like the last release], “You’ll Be A Corpse Before Your Time,” comes blasting through with the intensity of early Rise Against running in its veins. It starts everything off with a lot of energy, but does have it’s moments of slower speed and technical glory. The song actually grows quite epic and showcases the feel of the record so well that you know why it was made the lead single. The next couple tracks keep the speed and energy up which, though different from previous Sleeping releases,feels refreshing here. My one complaint, especially early on, is the jazz influenced technical skill shown on previous releases is not here for the most part. There’s a couple thick bass lines [“Friday Night,” “Running Faster”], but as a whole its all kept at 10 on the volume and speed scale with little room for those little nuances that set the band apart prior to now. In fact, tracks like, “Bomb the World,” and, “Refusive Relationship,” near the world of hardcore or at least straightforward punk more than sound like the Sleeping which use to be a band I never thought had a key sound, but now have proven to very much have an identity that they are associated with. To me, the one key track is, “Running Faster,” which mixes The Sleeping sound we were wanting with near Panic At The Disc style rhythms and it just flows beautifully and keeps you coming back again and again.
Lyrically, the album isn’t too far out there from most the previous material. Except, “Ripped Dress,” which uses a metaphor for the world that just seems so contrived that I was instantly turned off for the rest of the song. There seems to be a solid mix of actual and fictional storylines that never get so out there that you’re pulled out of the music. This is assisted with top notch production that seems to keep most the music and vocals on near similar levels to showcase the disc as a single piece of art than a bunch of chunks pushed together. Include some truly captivating album artwork and a glorious overall sound and you have a presentation worthy of it’s own paragraph as it has just received here on this site [see what I did there?].
In the end, the lost of Cameron comes out in the more forceful, heavy sound on the record, but the band does seem to have found a new footing they can work on. What It Takes has issues with giving you a reason to continue on at times, but when they find the groove they’ve kept going for the previous two records, the album is like a drug addiction even the strongest willed person couldn’t break. I don’t know if all this time spent waiting has been completely worth it, but then again, I’ve only had the record for a few weeks. There is a lot of potential for growth here [as always with this band] and I think most people will be completely content with their new sound. Don’t expect a huge change, but know it’s not the same as it was.
*Written By: James Shotwell*
Grade: 7.5
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