Silence the Wake "XOXOXO" CD
[Vendetta]
Damn, not bad. Fast paced, energetic melodic hardcore with a good sense of speed and some amazing fucking basslines that just fly all over the place with no real regard for mirroring the guitar parts at all. I love that! The vocals are basically screamed with a few more shouted/spoken passages (or faint hints at singing), but it all fits the explosive feel of the music fairly well. Most of the songs are pretty streamlined in structure with layers of melodic chords and a few more technical/lightly metallic lead lines or arpeggiated patterns adding more detail. "To Have and to Hold" has more of an old school hardcore drive but messes with the rhythm and layering to color it up a bit, "...A Faint Smile" keeps it short but sweet with lots of rhythmic changeups and memorable guitar melodies, "All I Know" creatively layers some clean guitars into the background behind distorted chords, "1,000 Words (To Futi)" is a little darker at times with lots of clean guitars coming into play, "Forget Luck I'm Neverending Tonight" runs a surprising six minutes with some Iron Maiden-esque melody lines and a closing span of spacey keyboards/piano, etc. Were the production a little beefier this could be a killer record. It sounds good as it is, but there's not quite enough oomph to really nail it. The percussion could use added low-end, the basslines could be more consistently up front, the guitars could be slightly heavier for extra density, and the vocals need a little more warmth to blend in against the music rather than falling a little to the side. The mix is fairly even and the tones are definitely tolerable, don't get me wrong, but I could easily imagine a more polished sound really kicking this material up a notch. Visually things are pretty minimal with black and white and a little pink, consisting of images of floral patterns and some withered sheet music. The lyrics aren't really doing much for me. Could be better, could be worse. They're your pretty typical love gone wrong type of songs, so you should know what to expect there. I like this, though. I honestly wasn't expecting all that much from it, but it's winning me over. I think they need to tweak the recording a bit and work on the vocals so that some of the slightly more irritating or faux dramatic aspects don't mess with the effectiveness of the music. The songwriting could probably be a little more cohesive at times as well (some of the metal riffs aren't really clicking), but the more energetic bursts are fuckin' great. I'll be looking out for more from these guys. (6/10)
Running time - 31:03, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: To Have and to Hold, ...A Faint Smile, All I Know]
Vendetta Records - http://www.vendettarecords.com

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