s a general rule it is better to be dissatisfied by an album rather than disinterested in it. The former involves some level of energy. “Oh, don’t get ____ by ____, it’s pretty awful” is an indication of feeling and preference, to say nothing of being a natural check against those who would recommend without consideration at all. But the albums that stir no feeling and are quickly forgotten do far more offense than those that are merely bad. People seldom say, “Oh, don’t get ____ by ____, it’ll leave you nonplussed” because a judgment either way hasn’t been made. The most avid consumers of music are also its harshest critics, and when they’re offered music that effectively does nothing, it is of paramount damage.

Catalog Debris is the album music consumers hate precisely because it does absolutely nothing. Never hitting one extreme or the other, it is marked and marred by an infatuation with middle ground radio rock: just tune it up and tune yourself out. The songs contained aren’t meant to be affecting stories; none of them will ever be played more than once through. The band’s biography claims they were influenced by, “the dark melodies of The Cure, the guitar rhythms of U2, and the passion of Nine Inch Nails,” but none of those influences is remotely present. The melodies are pretty standard, placing reverb on each note does not make you The Edge, and they should know that Reznor’s “passion” is based on darker fare than what they provide. When a band claims influences, we should at the very least be able to discern them.

If there is one advantage to this kind of fodder rock, it’s that you can observe the primitive form of a myriad of other (and better) groups out there. Keep the same structures, increase the riffage, and clean up the entire package a bit and you could probably excavate some top 10 radio singles from bands like Switchfoot and Hoobastank. Better yet, drop tune the guitars a little more, tell Tim Koberstein to Christ up the lyrics a bit and you have the banality of groups like Creed and, thematically at least, P.O.D. Hell, keep the dropped tuned guitars and teach the whole lot of them even more melody and they could end up with space rock behemoths like Failure and Shiner.

A fair comparison would be to Dredg, since both juxtapose a somewhat hard instrumental background with softer vocal performances. The thing is that Dredg has barely gotten away with some pretty egregious transgressions—mostly in content—because they’re remarkably close to perfecting their craft. Seven Degrees from Center lacks both the overflowing creativity of a band like Dredg as well as the same thematic resonance. They are effectively a picture of better bands in a retarded state, the difference being that even groups like Shiner at least struggled with their state and actively sought evolution. Catalog Debris never once overextends itself, never once does it show teeth or struggle to actualize a specific form. In the end it’s like some kind of aural canvas—an empty body seeking reconfiguration.