A reviewer’s ears can only take so much. I really, really want to like Hot Panda. Musically, I think they are really strong, but I just can’t stand their singer, Chris Connelly – he has some serious pitch problems. I have to commend Evil Nature, Shoot Your Horse and F—k Shit Up/Hell Hey Hex for their good groove and/or nice backup vocals, but the rest of the album is pretty brutal; to see what I mean listen to Pools and the sickening Poor Little Ambulance. Also, I’m not crazy about Heath Parsons’s keyboards. All in all, if they got a new singer and ditched the keyboards, How Come I’m Dead could be a pretty killer album.

Published in Volume 65, Number 12 of The Uniter (November 18, 2010)