Beneath the Ashes "Nailed to Your Ruins" CD
[State of Grace]
Generic band name with references to "ashes" and being "beneath" something + generally long and silly song titles like "Thank Heavens When Someone is Crazy Enough to Give Me a Daisy" = fairly generic modern metalcore that combines your standard chugga chugga mosh parts, lots of pseudo technical runs, discordant chord progressions, a little bit of melodic tremolo picking action, and blistering vocal screams. Is it good? It's alright. It doesn't make me want to turn it off, but like many of these bands they suffer from writing some good riffs, but not particularly good songs. There are too many changes all over the place, there's not a great deal of fluidity, they don't stick with the memorable passages for long enough, etc. (especially problematic when the songs hit longer running times of five or six minutes). The brief "Bled", complete with distant singing and screaming vocals, clean guitars, and intense melodies is the most coherent and forceful track herein, definitely hinting at what this band could do if they wrote songs instead of stringing riffs together. At the end of the disc they cover "Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)" by Journey, which is the second time I've heard a metalcore band cover that song in a month, and I don't understand that at all. I love Journey, and this is my favorite Journey song, and these kids butcher it. Steve Perry would vomit if he heard these hack vocals. Now, they do have a tight performance (when they want it to be, sometimes they get intentionally caustic and sloppy) and a fairly strong recording working in their favor. I could deal with a slightly warmer guitar tone with less of a bite to the high tones, but the mix is pretty strong, and overall the recording is clear and has density to it. I think smoothing out the guitars would add a lot to their approach, but the drums are tolerable, I can hear the bass off in the distance, and the screaming is dead even with the guitars pretty much. It does sound better than a good portion of this stuff tends to, so... I'll give 'em that. Visually everything looks alright. It's a bit dark and hard to make things out, but the lyrics are easy to read and the colors and everything are consistent, so it's fine for the most part. The lyrics are really generic and don't grab me at all: "I hold my chest as tomorrow bleeds away. Such beautiful words you fed me. I see now that I was choking on every line..." I don't know, I can listen to it, but I'm not really that into it. With more focus and less emphasis on cramming a million riffs into every song these guys could do some damage, but I'm burnt on this stuff. I've heard hundreds of CD's that sound almost identical to this in the last four years, from various labels/bands all over the world. It's tiresome. I hate to hear potential basically go to waste. Better than average, but still nothing special. (6/10)
Running time - 43:21, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: Bled, Open Eyes]
State of Grace - http://www.stateofgracehc.com

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