Panic, not so much.
A Touch of Panic is more like a touch of emo, a touch of hardcore, and a touch -- more like a gallon, actually -- of utterly generic post-
Stone Temple Pilots '90s alternative rock. It all sounds far too studied and contrived to sound panicked; singer Matt Slider's sub-
Chris Cornell yarl of a voice and the heard-it-all-before riffage of guitarists Jason Jones and
Matt Wright make
the Feds sound like just the band for 2007 high-school students who are for some reason bummed that they were in diapers during the brief heyday of
Candlebox. Yes,
Candlebox: the thuddingly ordinary flannel-codpiece rawk of
A Touch of Panic isn't even interesting enough to sound like the good bandwagon jumpers of the time, like
Silverchair or
Alice in Chains. ~ Stewart Mason