The popular American rock band Daughtry has released their new EP, Shock the System (Part Two). As the title suggests, it’s the second installment of another EP, which came out a year ago.
Chris Daughtry, the lead singer, guitarist, and main songwriter, shares in an interview that the songs making up Shock the System (Part Two) are “truly steeped in darkness and mental health.” He cites The Day I Die as an example, born from a moment in the studio where Chris opened up to the rest of the band about how tough life feels, inspiring the song’s line “I keep dreaming of the day I die”
These are songs the artist says have served as therapy for him, and singing them has helped him feel better at times, as they are expressions of emotions that have built up over several years, especially since the deaths of his mother and daughter.
Chris adds that his music, like what’s on this EP, has grown heavier on purpose. It’s exactly how he’s always wanted to sound.
Shock the System (Part Two) only has seven tracks, but the opener track, The Seeds, is basically a short instrumental piece clocking in at one minute, built on piano and electronic textures, just to draw us into the EP’s mood.
The remaining six songs are straight-up hard rock, with a focus on intense, well-crafted choruses. It’s clear right from Divided, the first proper track. Chris’s voice erupts in cathartic fury over a bed of electric guitars.
Next up is the aforementioned The Day I Die, which not only kicks off with piano and percussive cello, but sticks to the same sonic blueprint as the one before: relatively straightforward hard rock, where distorted power chords roar, paired with a habit of looping those intense, emotional choruses over and over.
This is where I start feeling like I’ve heard this music a hundred times before. It’s a tried-and-true rock formula. Chris is the one who gives these songs their core identity. Without him, they’d risk coming off as pretty generic.
Maybe it’s tough to be musically innovative these days, especially in the realm of commercial hard rock that Daughtry delivers here. Sometimes it hits me that pretty much everything’s already been done. The most distinctive thing a rock band can bring to the table today is probably its vocalist, and hey, in Daughtry’s case, there’s no argument there.
Chris is genuinely an outstanding vocalist. His voice carries plenty of emotional shades, and his powerhouse screams have a cathartic edge that feels utterly authentic, amplified by the dark, desperate lyrics tackling themes like terror, anguish, abandonment, uncertainty, and emotional pain.
With The Bottom, the band shakes up the formula a bit, layering in a dance rhythm and electronic sounds over the rock as embellishments and a lead-in to the inevitable explosive chorus.
Terrified doubles down on that same experiment, building an electro-dance vibe before the expected, emotive, rock-driven chorus. In my view, these electronic touches add just enough variety to make the EP’s listen more engaging.
The penultimate track, Razor, pulls us back to the world of electric guitars as the main driver. Though the intro is fairly subdued, that hard rock assault suddently hits hard. I’ll say this: it features one of my favorite lines from the whole EP, “These are the days of letting go.” It’s a simple phrase that slips in subtly at first within the song, but gets a powerful reprise at the end, what struck me as really effective.
The closer, Antidote, is built on clean, arpeggiated guitar. It’s the softest moment on the entire EP, though the chorus still packs plenty of punch.
Overall, I think Shock the System (Part Two) is a tight collection of songs that’s pretty damn solid within its genre, standing out thanks to how raw Chris Daughtry sounds when he lays bare, and belts out, his darkest feelings. Highly recommended for any hard rock fan.
