Atreyu "The Curse" CD
[Victory]
I'll level with you, I pretty much hate this band. Along with Eighteen Visions, Atreyu represents pretty much everything that I hate about "metalcore" today, not the least of which is its overemphasis on "fashion". However, unlike Eighteen Visions, Atreyu actually seems to be becoming a much better band with time. Sure, the layout is fucking retarded. This copy has a shitty promotional booklet with silly factoids about the band inside for "marketing" purposes, but I'm reviewing it anyway 'cause I couldn't fucking care less what the lyrics deal with. All I see is a hideously ugly girl on the cover with fangs and a nasty makeup job giving her fucked up veins all over the place. Oh, and of course she's just wearing red underwear. And she looks about 12 years old, which is gross (even if she is probably older). Seriously, if you run a successful label, why the fuck would you let bands put such stupid looking shit all over their record covers? But anyway, while I'm still no fan of the band, and would never let a record that looks this terrible find a home in my personal collection, there are some good songs here - and that's what this band always lacked in the past. Is it original? Well, not really. There are tons of generic Swedish styled guitar harmonies, and yeah, they do the typical blending of singing and screaming vocals, but the choruses are catchy, and structurally these songs are infinitely more linear and tangible than their last record. There are still weak tracks, but I'm liking the way rocked out vibe of the leads, and the singing vocals are far more unique than most of these bands too, complete with some cool harmonies and interesting patterns to boot. The worst part about the record are the hammer-on/pull-off/tapping nonsense riffs. They don't do that shit too often, but when do it's a surefire death knell for the flow of any given composition. Production? Ehhh... not great, but better than last time. It's just mediocre to me. It sounds fine, but it's lacking a lot. There's no low-end punch... it lacks character as a whole. I don't know what it is. Nothing jumps out at me as a huge problem, but at the same time, a better recording could've possibly swayed me on this one... probably not though... because it does drag on and get stale after awhile. And I deducted a point from their rating because the "artwork" is so fucking dumb. I'm not even kidding. I wholeheartedly believe these guys will actually lose precious record sales (or "units", as the bigshots call 'em) because the cover of this disc is one of the worst things I've ever seen for such a sizeable label. Great move, geniuses... write a tolerable to half decent set of songs and then wrap it up in a big wad of shit. Superb marketing strategy. If they keep progressing like this I bet their next record will actually impress me, but who knows? And for the record, I like these guys' attitude... every interview I read with 'em is totally bitter, and I can respect that. If only they'd drop the "image"... (5/10)
Running time - 43:20, Tracks: 13
[Notable tracks: Bleeding Mascara, Right Side of the Bed, Five Vicodin Chased With a Shot of Clarity]
Victory Records - http://www.victoryrecords.com

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