The cool thing about this is that it is not really a split EP as it may seem, but it is more of a collaborative effort in the same vein as the Rival Schools United by Onelinedrawing EP. One band writes the music, the other pens the words and sings them -- with the exception of “Now I’m a Shadow,” which is done by solely by Small Brown Bike. And then there is the all too familiar “Under Pressure” You know, the Queen/Bowie song, which is just plain wrong and should be left alone.

“This is a lot like Sparta,” so I thought when I saw Small Brown Bike opening up for them at the Roxy show. I enjoyed their live show without ever hearing them otherwise, and so I like the outcome of this team venture. In fact, I really like the way The Casket Lottery adds its own flavor to Small Brown Bike’s music (with the sad exception of the poor choice of cover material, which I thought was a joke at first). In the beginning, I was hoping they were paying homage to the Vanilla Ice-man and just using the first few notes as an intro. But then they went too far, trying to transform the song into some post-punk emo monstrosity. And then it gets worse, with the yadda-dee-da crap (think Peter Gabriel scatting at the end of “In Your Eyes”). The last song, “Riding With Death,” is far more reflective on the overall goodness of this EP.