After five years of doing reviews, I’ve learned the mostly useless skill of being able to tell when a band is making music for pure fun versus a band making music to get plays or money of some sort. There’s a stark difference, and if you’re anything like me, you overwhelmingly lean towards the former as I find it so much more engaging to listen to a band that’s just in it for the passion of making music and to have a good time. It allows the album to take on a different presence, and it’s with bands like Gracious Sinner that we see it done splendidly.

Something that rock has always been known for to me is how widespread it is as it permeates quite literally every single modern culture in some form or another from its pop culture influence to inspiring millions upon millions of young musicians for decades, and that’s far from anything that’s to come to an end soon. Whether it be a band of teens or college students practicing in their basements, garage, or college dorms, there’s always talent from young acts that are simply at it to have a good time with the tunes and their friend. Gracious Sinner couldn’t be any better of an example as their latest EP of “Ex Nihilo” takes the idea of a college dorm band to its epitome as we’re granted four humble tracks that are more than worth listening to as these guys show us just what it means to have a good time. There’s nothing flashy or terribly fancy about “Ex Nihilo” as we’re given terrific rock that draws from a magnitude of places to give us a really well-rounded listen filled with plenty of melodies, casual rock flavor that’s nigh on infectious just about every time I hear it, and the unique fire of a band performing their passion purely for fun. It’s not often that we can get a band that’s able to do all that with a brilliant synergy, but it’s here that we’re given a band that actually makes it sound good to where there’s not a moment of “Ex Nihilo” that I could call bland in any sort of way as Gracious Sinner keeps everything interesting at all times.

It all comes together in such a way that Gracious Sinner could easily become the sort of band that conquers all the local music festivities with their sound, and it’s the exact sort of thing that I can see being built upon time after time until we get to a point where Gracious Sinner really is the exact sort of garage rock band that we can idolize in their own special light. And should “Ex Nihilo” be anything to glean from then this is a band that I can see doing very nice things in the future.

LISTEN to “Ex Nihilo” on Bandcamp here.

LIKE Gracious Sinner on Facebook here.