Review: Of Mice & Men - 'How To Survive'

Of Mice & Men dropped their new single “How To Survive” via Rise Records Friday, February 15 and it has been a nonstop hot topic in the metal community since. The track is one of the hardest-hitting, heavy songs we’ve seen from the band in years.

“How To Survive” clearly correlates more to the sound of their 2011 release, The Flood, which is personally one of my favorite OM&M albums. I was quite intrigued to hear the same songwriting approach on this track and am quite excited to see where the band could potentially go with their sound on the rest of their new album.

How they manage to keep the sound they had on their first album but are somehow managing to build off of it successfully over the years by evolving as a band and bringing in new influences is very admirable. I always find it wonderful when bands choose to keep their roots as they grow -- especially when it’s done well and good music is what is still being produced.

While I am satisfied with the music portion of the song, the lyrics are by far the most boring part; brutally underwhelming and repetitive.

The majority of the lyrics in the song reside in the chorus with barely any change in the instrumentation to differentiate the sections of the song.

Even in guitarist Phil Manansala’s impressive solo after the bridge, my absolute favorite part of the song, the lyrics were just a major letdown. It sounds like almost every other band in the scene could use these and no one would bat an eye. Easily forgettable.

Overall, “How To Survive” sounds a lot heavier than Of Mice & Men’s previous work on Defy, so one can only hope that a new album with similar influence is presented to us soon, preferably with a bit more lyrical variety.

Of Mice & Men will be on tour with Beartooth, Hands Like Houses, and Dead American starting in April!.

You can watch their new single below:

Scene Daddy Rating: 4 out of 5