A Javelin Reign "Wrath of the Rice Cooker" CD
[Lovelost]
I'm not into this. It's heavily rhythmic chaotic metalcore with lots of staccato rhythms, chunky breakdowns, tremolo picking, caustic chords, pull-off riffs, quick changes, and gruffly shouted vocals. You know, the usual. Some of it's alright, largely when they lock into a solid chord progression and stick with it for a little while (a rare occurrence), but the performances aren't tight enough and the songwriting is bland. Often it sort of sounds like the band members are slightly out of synch with one another during all of the rhythmic start/stop stuff, and a lot of the more technical note-based guitar runs get choppy. They definitely need to play with more fluidity. The constant stacking of riff after riff is what gets to me though, especially when they randomly break into a little clean part or a quirky sort of angular riff or whatever. There are very few tangible threads within the compositions to grasp onto or create a sense of force. It's just boring to me, I don't know, I don't get any real sense of feeling from 90% of this music. "Lust Buried", however, opens slow with distorted bass and unusual clean guitars, eventually building up into lightly distorted screaming and intense layers of guitar chords, but keeping that plodding tempo - making for what is by far and wide the strongest track herein - a bit of a surprise since it runs almost six minutes, which is double the length of the other songs. But this is much darker and more emotional, quite good actually... makes me wonder why they waste their time with all of the chaotic shit. Similarly, the last track is an unlisted instrumental with a good mix of lightly distorted guitars and those slower tempos, brining in more melody as well as some feedback and stronger layering of contrasting guitar parts. Not bad. The production is at least pretty good. I really like the bass sound and think they should turn that up louder, but other than that everything sounds really good. The mix is solid with no gaps, the guitars are loud and thick, the percussion resonant and dense, and even the vocals sound pretty damn good. A lot of bands would benefit from this level of sound quality, but these guys really just need to do more with their songwriting. I don't know how I feel about the layout. It's definitely crisp and looks pretty professional, but the imagery (which is all high contrast and stylistic in design) and color scheme are strange, almost to the point of being misleading. I'll give them credit for using a very interesting arrangement of the brief lyrics in the booklet, they may get hard to read, but I've definitely never seen this type of unusual placement. Everything seems to be somewhat abstractly personal, so it's nothing groundbreaking or particularly catching. I don't know, this is a boring disc, what can I say? Hearing "Lust Buried" I can confidently state that this band is focusing their collective energy in the wrong area, because the slower and more discordantly melodic material herein is infinitely superior to everything else they're doing. I'm totally lost as to why the majority of this work is chaotic metalcore when it should and could be something far more powerful. (4/10)
Running time - 32:37, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Lust Buried, and the unlisted track]
Lovelost Records - http://www.lovelostrecords.com

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