Artist: Sick Puppies

Album: “Dressed Up As Life”

Release Date: April 3

Label: Virgin

Availability: CD, iTunes

Influenced by bands such as Green Day, Rage Against the Machine, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sevendust, Sick Puppies describe their sound as “Green Day mashed with Sevendust on acid” according to their MySpace page, www.myspace.com/sickpuppies.

Releasing their first full-length album in the United States after relocating to Los Angeles from Sydney, Australia, the Sick Puppies are set to make their mark in the music industry, and definitely have a good start, with their debut album “Dressed Up As Life,” as well as an appearance Thursday on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

With a clever mixture of textures such as lots of chromatic bass lines, heavy guitar riffs, crisp tenor vocals and hard-charging drum beats, as well as contrasting acoustic and clean guitar riffs on the beginning of many of the songs, the album gives listeners a taste of a multiplicity of styles – although the band remains solidly in the rock genre. A standout track already popular with listeners – boasting more than 600,000 plays on the band’s MySpace page – is “All The Same,” which surprises listeners with its seemingly slow-burn approach, giving listeners a gentle lullaby of vocals and acoustic guitar until the song breaks out around two minutes in. The song is also backed up with a poetic use of language that is sure to pull at the heartstrings as it tells the story of the vicious cycle of a love lost and found.

“Go ahead tell me you’ll leave again/you’ll just come back running/holding your scarred heart in hand/It’s all the same/And I’ll take you for who you are/if you take me for everything/do it all over again/It’s all the same.”

Sick Puppies’ MySpace