Waterdown "The Files You Have on Me" CD
[Victory]
This is the second Victory full-length from this German sextet, and I'm disappointed to say that it's not nearly as good as their last record was. They're still mainly mixing melodic hardcore with some aggressive metalcore influences and using two vocalists to split up the singing and the screaming styles... but the songwriting isn't particularly catchy, nor is it memorable. Every once in awhile they'll break out a nice semi-technical riff or a solid melodic chord progression, but there's not a whole lot of fluidity, and as a whole the record is just sort of boring. It's just... take "Dodging Bullets", for example: One minute they've got a pretty solid chorus going on, the next they're throwing in bad Slayer riffs or dissonant chunkiness for no real reason, and then they're bringing in brief spurts of post-hardcore textures, etc. That's an adequate representation for most of the record - some of it's great, some of it's awful, and most of it seems to lack direction. The singing vocals also seem a bit forced and uncomfortable at points, and that holds things back. The one general exception is "Xerox", where the singing is a bit softer and more monotone, working within a more cohesive and emotionally darker musical framework that makes it by far the best song on the record (along with the very similar "At the Waterfront"). But what the hell is going on with songs like "Nothing"? I mean, shit... it's like some kind of fucked up pop punk song. Absolutely terrible. I'm lost. The production is pretty good. I don't like the separation present in the mix, but the individual tones are all fairly nice. The bass tone is perfect, the vocals sound alright, the guitars are very clear, and the drums have natural tones going on. But the vocals are separated from the music a bit in the mix, sounding dryer and off to the side or something, and that makes them even more distracting, and leaves a sizeable gap in the middle. I'd like to hear the vocals blended in with the music and the bass turned up a bit more so that its definition would be met with some low-end density to help fill in those holes. The layout's pretty good. The color scheme and typefaces are very consistent, and I like the bold black and white photos of each band member's instrument used to represent their page of the booklet rather than typically posed shots. Lyrically most of the songs deal subtly with what would likely be considered political ideas, but there's a lot of personal content as well, so it's a blend throughout. "We go on living with our TV sets, we'll pay our bills and take the threats, But someday we'll start to think about what we lost, We lost control now we're objects, We lost our hearts what did we expect? We lost each other now there is really nothing left for us, Nothing - can we regain our consciousness? The remains on the battlefield." At the tail end of the liner notes the band espouses support for PETA, Noam Chomsky, and Michael Moore, but their lyrics never really get that involved in such arenas. Ehhh... I don't know. I can't believe how bland this is compared to that last album. It's like they're trying to expand their influences but they've completely lost their knack for songwriting, so they come off as a very confused band that combines melodic hardcore, pop punk, emo, metalcore, and stale yet tolerable radio metal in a haphazard format that doesn't really have an impact on the listener. What an enormous letdown. A damn shame, too... (4/10)
Running time - 46:18, Tracks: 13
[Notable tracks: Xerox, At the Waterfront]
Victory Records - http://www.victoryrecords.com

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