Glory of This "Adoration" CD
[Indianola]
For melodic metalcore meets emo this isn't that bad. It's not all that original and it does need polishing up, but the songwriting is decent and overall I kind of like it. It's basically your usual mix of heavy chord progressions and melodic textures with hints at metal riffing and vocals that shift from vicious screams to singing choruses and lots of vocal harmonies - with quite a few tracks where singing takes the lead more often. It gets a little catchy at times without really hitting on anything poppy, though there's definitely a radio friendly angle to it on some level considering the types of bands that are able to get "popular" in this day and age. Appropriately enough opener "The Fear That Gave Me Wings" has more energy than a lot of the songs; the start of "More Often Than Not" drops some great dissonant note combinations that are sadly broken up by some bland pull-off runs for the bulk of the piece; "Sway With the Structure" has some creative riffing and picking patterns and a solid chorus even though the song drags on a bit as a whole; and so on. "Fragile House of Cards" is more of a midpaced track where singing takes the fore and comes off as more laidback and melodic as a whole - not to a "ballad" degree or anything, but it's definitely a softer piece... and not one of my favorites, to be honest. "Flip for It" brings in more clean guitars to make it a little more blatantly "soft", and "Circle Yes or No" is the actual "ballad", but they're slightly better songs in the writing, so... I'm not bothered. For the most part the writing is good, it's just not quite there yet, you know what I mean? The recording's pretty good. The only minor issues are that certain aspects of the drums are a little thumpy and jump out some, but they're mixed well enough to remain under control. And the distortion over the guitars can be a little dry, but after a few songs your ears tend to adjust to it. Other than that everything's clear and pretty full. I definitely think the vocals sound very good, both performance-wise and where the production's concerned. In rare instances some of the singing sounds slightly forced, but it's generally rather comfortable. Visually everything is nice and crisp with ultra clean text arrangements and band photos layered with random textures and images of birds and cityscapes and such. Lyrically, though, this isn't my thing. It's basically personal junk with lots of goofy references and metaphors and blah, blah. Just check out lines line, "Confessions by lipstick on a stemmed wineglass is all I've got (to remind me the last time you were here)..." No fucking thank you, gentlemen. When I said the writing was "good" but "not quite there", that sums this record up fairly well. There's a degree of quality to it, but they need to push a little harder to really break it open. I bet their next record will be pretty damn good. The lyrics blow, but I could ignore that if the writing was really well done, so I won't hold that against 'em. We'll see... (6/10)
Running time - 36:13, Tracks: 10
[Notable tracks: The Fear That Gave Me Wings, Senior Superlative, Uncomfortable Silence]
Indianola Records - http://www.indianolarecords.com

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