Review: Above This Fire “In Perspective” CD

Here's some metalcore from Cleveland that's pretty typical of the state of the genre today, though they succeed in throwing more energy into their songwriting that definitely has more of an explosive quality going on. A lot of that energy comes complements of the vocals, which are straight yells rather than forced shouts, and there's something about the character of the guy's voice that's really sincere and effective (nice backup shouts, too). Now, don't get me wrong, a lot of the Swedish styled dual guitar harmonies are tired and the tremolo picking, when it arises, is dead in the water (as with most such bands), so there are some issues with the writing, but I'm loving those vocals. The arrangements and everything are pretty generic, combining the aforementioned riffing approaches with your commonplace chugging breaks and a few more discordant or caustic areas, but admittedly the prevalence of streamlined melodic hardcore oriented chord progressions gives them an edge that can help separate them from the pack in the long run - just a touch, anyway. But I also think they fall back on using octave chords too often, which can certainly get irritating in otherwise solid tunes like "Miles Apart", which is a nice, straightforward number. "City of Locust" is among the more melodic songs, bringing out some interesting chord phrasings and picking patterns that get more creative with the palm-muting and such and catch my ear quite a bit; while "My Kiss of Death" follows with some of the most directly discordant playing. The recording's alright but it's too muffled and kind of suffocates some of the details. It needs more crispness to give each instrument room to breathe and really pop out, you know? It's pretty warm and after a few songs my ears can adjust to the somewhat compressed sound, but with more definition to the bass, more crunch to the guitars, and more of a natural snap to the percussion they'd sound good. I'm fine with the mix, and they're on the right track in general, but a little added punch would kick it up to that next level and add more to their performances. The layout looks pretty god damn good, complete with some Derek Hess artwork that, for once, isn't immediately recognizable as such. There are a lot of tight text arrangements and bold uses of space with interesting illustrative imagery that's not at all generic, and that's a refreshing change of pace. Sadly I can't say the same for the lyrics ("Wrap your wings around me angel..."), which are the usual personal exploration junk, but whatever. "City of Locust" is a great song and every one of these tracks has some killer riffs in it, so I'd love to hear this band toss the more obviously metallic stuff in favor of the energetic melodic chords and chunky breakdowns. Not bad, they've got some ground to cover before they'll impress me, but this is tolerable.