BEST FIRST RELEASE 2011 Award Winner! 
Runners-Up: Kye Kye (Young Love), Peter Furler (On Fire), A Past Unknown (To Those Perishing), Tricia Brock (The Road), Fallstar (Reconciler. Refiner. Igniter.), Anthem Lights (Anthem Lights), Aaron Gillespie (Anthem Song), The City Harmonic (I Have A Dream (It Feels Like Home)),
Over The Ocean (Paper House).
Honorable Mentions: Icon For Hire (Scripted), Ashes Remain (What I’ve Become),
Cory Lamb (Break The Cycle).
We Are The Ones is an excellent album. The lyrics are fantastic throughout; the vocals are very dynamic, using about a 50/50 mix of singing and screaming— and both high and low ranges in the latter— to great effect; and the music is equally dynamic.
The album kicks off with title track “We Are The Ones”, an excellent, tone-setting intro that builds perfectly and then leads directly into the next track.
“Vapors” wastes no time, ripping into heavy vocals first before moving to a multilayered mix. The track features a couple of nice shifts in musical pace and tone, as well.
And it gets even better from there— “Heralds” is the perfect showcase of the band’s dynamic vocal mix (and perfectly matching music). This track is very memorable.
“Tonight My Son” takes on a slightly faster and heavier tone overall, and also features several great rhythmic sections.
“No Rival” has a particularly powerful feel at points, especially at the end.
And sweeping closer “Oh The Depths” is possibly the most memorable track of them all, taking every already-excellent element demonstrated in all of the previous songs and somehow amping them up even further, creating a perfect finale that both satisfies and then prompts you to replay the whole record again right away. 
Label Rerelease Bonus Content:
The Solid State rerelease of this EP also contains two excellent, full-sounding acoustic-version bonus tracks (for “Heralds” and “No Rival”). And while the two songs’ original screaming portions are (expectedly ) replaced in these acoustic versions with singing, the vocals are actually not ‘soft’ as such— they still have a good amount of power behind them (about the same level as a full Rock song).
In short, this is a fantastic debut, and definitely worthy of Best First Release!
Our rating for We Are The Ones: 5 & 1/2 Stars. 