Freefall "Unspoken Words" CD
[Superhero]
Not bad. This is promising melodic metalcore (with touches of emo) from Germany with two vocalists handling both screaming and singing. The actual singing isn't that great, it's a little plain and lacks emphatic force, but that's one of the only slight hindrances, and I can tolerate it. The screaming is a pretty caustic midrange attack, and I find that more appropriate than the singing. I think the singing provides good contrast, but it needs to be stronger to really work out in this context. Musically most of the material is moderately paced and tends to rely on rhythmic chunkiness with some melodic/dissonant layering and a few clean breaks to add more variety. "Stars Like You" unloads some heavier chords without abandoning melody and ends up as one of the more memorable tracks; while the aptly titled "Chugga Chugga" is much more metallic through and through, with some tremolo picking runs and much more aggressive arrangements that shun any lighter fare. "For One Minute" is a touch slower than most of the songs and very effectively balances heaviness with subtle melody, offering a few slightly more rocked out chords at times and letting the bass play a larger role to some degree. "This Season Never Ends" closes and has a heavy emo sort of sound that reminds me a lot of some of the stuff that was big in the 90's, and coincidentally the riffs in this song are actually some of the strongest on the disc. The recording's not bad at all. The vocals are mixed too loud, which makes them distracting since they're so often layered, but other than that it's a good sound for what's going on. The drums are fine, the guitars are pretty good, and you can just faintly make out the bass. I'd recommend minor tweaking to the mix to let the bass fill things out and balance out the vocals with the music, and the clean guitars could use a bit more color, but other than that I'm okay with it. The design's not that great since the titles can be hard to read on the traycard and the anime artwork on the cover just doesn't fit at all. The lyrics are at least clean though, and the content's a little different than usual as far as mixing somewhat positive lyrics with a few tracks dealing with having fun and others more along the usual lines of personal hardships and all that. I like this for the most part. They need to work out the kinks with the singing, and a little more energy to some of the tempos would add an extra kick to pick things up a bit, but this is a good debut. Hopefully they'll really win me over the next time around. (6/10)
Running time - 45:00 (approximately), Tracks: 12
[Notable tracks: Stars Like You, For One Minute, This Season Never Ends]
Superhero Records - http://www.superherorecords.com

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