Blue Eyed Boy Mister Death "s/t" CD
[Bent Rail]
Hmmm, not what I expected, but this is highly abrasive metalcore with some indie-ish sort of elements swirling around in there (quirky clean breaks and such). At first I thought this was going to be totally annoying, but they're really tight as musicians, so they pull this stuff off pretty well. Scathing vocal screams, some slower moments that harness a good deal of melody, a lot of relatively well controlled noisiness, some typical discordant riffs and such, lots of speed and caustic textures to the guitars... all that stuff. The huge sludgy break in "1, 2, 3, Excuses" totally kills, as do the fucked up singing vocals layered with the screaming. A similar passage in "A High-Heeled Vulnerability" is even better, getting a bit melodic and even more bleak and destructive... I wish the entire song had been based around that riff, because the first chunk of the track is pretty boring, and then it suddenly becomes utterly incredible! The production's okay. The drums sound pretty good, they're nice and taut, but the bass gets lost, and the guitars are so thin that they sort of dominate the mix. I love the sound of the vocals, the thin veil of distortion makes them blend in with the high-end of the guitars and sort of contribute to drowning out the rhythm section, but they're definitely vicious. I can deal with it. If they weren't really tight players the sound would probably kill 'em, so thankfully they've got their shit together. I don't mind the layout at all. Aside from the somewhat goofy band photos, the artwork looks pretty cool, and I like the clean simplicity of everything. All of the lyrics appear on one panel of the booklet with no divisions between which song is which, it's just a constant stream with no punctuation. "I'm grasping at hairs just to stay and I know it will go away but I'm taking my life back today so goodnight sleep tight and give up tonight this is the end of my melodrama cut the cord my friend." This is pretty decent. It's not totally my thing, but I can get into it, and I could see this band doing awesome things... Imagine a very precise combination of newer Snapcase and newer Converge, and this is very likely what the result would sound like. (6/10)
Running time - 30:31, Tracks: 8
[Notable tracks: 1, 2, 3, Excuses, Your Black Tongue, A High-Heeled Vulnerability]
Bent Rail Foundation - http://www.bentrail.com

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